News & Media

2021

Nicholas E. Navin, Ph.D., has been appointed to the Grady F. Saunders, Ph.D. Distinguished Professorship for Molecular Biology.

Tapsi Kumar, M.S., awarded the The Thomas F. Burks Scholarship for Academic Merit. This award to given to students enrolled full-time at one of the UTHealth schools and have demonstrated excellence in academic achievement.

Tapsi Kumar, M.S., awarded the Rosalie B. Hite Graduate Fellowship in Cancer Research. Rosalie B. Hite Fellowship is for promising graduate students in the area of cancer research including translational and basic science. Selection of Fellows by the Hite Fellowship Committee is on the basis of academic excellence of the candidate and the relevance of their research to cancer.

Darlan Conterno Minussi awarded the 2021-2022 Schissler Foundation Fellowship. The Schissler Foundation Fellowship fosters collaboration with the emphasis on basic science projects with the greatest likelihood of translational application to human health. This prestigious awards gives significant help to research studies that will seek to make major contributions to the therapies and cures of common human disease through genetics.

Hanghui Ye awarded the 2021-2022 Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Fellowship in Cancer Research. This award is given in recognition of excellence in a faculty-student team. In particular, it recognizes the student's accomplishments and promise as a scientist; and at the same time allows us to recognize and honor a faculty member who has made singular contributions to both MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and cancer research.

Nicholas E. Navin, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Genetics, received the 2021 AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research for his seminal contributions to the understanding of genome evolution and intratumor heterogeneity in breast cancer and for his invention of single-cell DNA sequencing, which has impacted many diverse fields of biology and biomedicine and has directly contributed to the establishment of the single cell genomics field. The AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research was established by the AACR to recognize an early-career investigator for meritorious achievements in basic cancer research.

Yiyun Lin (Navin lab) has received a fellowship award. The Dr. John J. Kopchick Fellowships are awarded to students who demonstrate exceptional character, extracurricular leadership, research excellence and scholarly merit. Each fellowship provides support for the student and for their research and training.

2020

Nicholas E. Navin, Ph.D., was elected Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science to honor his diverse accomplishments, including pioneering research, leading within a given field, teaching and mentoring, fostering collaborations and advancing public understanding of science.

Tapsi Kumar, M.S., was awarded the Rosalie B. Hite Graduate Fellowship in Cancer Research. Rosalie B. Hite Fellowship is for promising graduate students in the area of cancer research including translational and basic science. Selection of Fellows by the Hite Fellowship Committee is on the basis of academic excellence of the candidate and the relevance of their research to cancer.

Runmin Wei, Ph.D., was awarded the Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship Award. Quantitative fellows with an interest in the intersection between computational biology, data science and cancer research are selected for this prestigious, four-year award. The recipients are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators across the country. The Fellowship encourages the nation's most promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding to work on creative high-risk projects. Dr. Wei will have two mentors for this fellowship; Nick Navin, Ph.D., and Ken Chen, Ph.D.

Yuehui Zhao, Ph.D., was awarded The CPRIT (Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas) Program’s TRIUMPH (Translational Research in Multi-Disciplinary Program) Postdoctoral Fellowship. The CPRIT TRIUMPH Fellowship is awarded to exceptional postdoctoral fellows at MD Anderson. The goals of this postdoctoral program are to expand the existing perspective of the fellow by strengthening their knowledge of cancer prevention research and current disciplines and to provide them with rigorous preparation in novel quantitative methods, appropriate to the proposed cancer prevention research.

Kaile Wang, Ph.D, was arecipient of the Dodie P. Hawn Award in Genetics for 2020. The Dodie P. Hawn Fellowship is an endowment gifted to UT MD Anderson Cancer Center from the Earl C. Sams Foundation for the cancer genetics research program. Dorothy (“Dodie”) Hawn was an active civic leader and president of the foundation for over 15 years. The annual Dodie P. Hawn Award in Genetics is for postdoctoral fellows who demonstrate outstanding promise as contributors and innovators in research.

2019

Nicholas Navin awarded the MD Anderson President’s Award for Research Excellence. Peter WT Pisters, M.D., president, recognized Dr. Navin for his excellence in research.

Tapsi Kumar, M.S., awarded the NCI T32 fellowship in Translational Genomics and Precision Medicine. This award is given to students with the goal to educate and train the next generation of scientists to understand broadly their role in driving precision medicine through discovery science and development of novel genomic analytical tools necessary to power this application in the clinical setting. In addition to a mentored research experience by one of our outstanding training faculty, Ph.D. candidates are expected to gain interdisciplinary training in core competency areas critical to the future of translational genomic science.

2018

Nicholas Navin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Genetics, was honored with the 2018 Dallas Forth Worth Living Legend Faculty Achievement Award in Basic Research. He was selected for his exemplary research work in MD Anderson Cancer Center’s mission areas.

2017

Nicholas Navin received the Jack and Beveraly Randall Prize for Excellence in Cancer Treatment. The Jack and Beverly Randall Endowment honored Navin's innovative cancer research with this award at the President’s Recognition for Faculty Excellence event.

2016

Nicholas Navin among first recipients of the prestigious Sabin Fellows program. Beginning this year, the Andrew Sabin Family Fellowship Program funded up to eight two-year research fellowships. The program encourages creative, independent thinking and high-risk, high-impact research. Fellowships give deserving early-career researchers at MD Anderson the means to strive toward their collective goal to end cancer. Navin aims to use single cell sequencing technologies to investigate tumor evolution in breast cancer patients and understand how they evolve resistance to chemotherapy. These studies are expected to lead to new diagnostic modalities and therapeutic targets to improve treatment and outcomes for breast cancer patients.

Monovar drills down into the cancer genome (Rice News)

2015

Nicholas Navin wins notable AAAS Martin & Rose Wachtel Cancer Research Award. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Wachtel Award is an annual award that honors early career investigators performing outstanding work in cancer research. Winners receive a cash prize, deliver a public lecture on their research and have their award entry essay published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Navin was selected for his research on single-cell DNA analysis. He presented his work at the National Institutes of Health on July 31, 2015.

‘Sequencing the Single Cancer Cell’ (Episode 1) and ‘Sequencing the Single Cell’ (Episode 2) are movies on our research produced by Illumina as part of a series titled ‘Adventures in Genomics’. 
From the Background to the Forefront (Genome Web)
Single-Cell Sequencing Pioneer Wins AAAS Wachtel Cancer Research Award (AAAS, NIH)

2014

Subclones - Go Forth and Mutate (Nature Rev Clinical Oncology) 
Cancer: One Cell At a Time (Nature)
With New Single-Cell Sequencing Approach, Researchers Examine Tumor Evolution and Mutation Rates (Genome Web)
Same Cancer, Different Time Zone (MD Anderson News)

2013

Tracking the Evolution of Cancer, Cell by Cell (Quanta/Scientific American)
Cancer Shows Strength Through Diversity (Nature)
The Downside to Diversity (Science)
Genomics: The Single Life (Nature)

2012

Sequencing Cells Offers Singular Insight into Cancer (Nature Medicine)
Single-Cell Sequencing Tackles Basic and Biomedical Questions (Science)
The 24-hour, $1000 Genome (Cancer Discovery)

2011

Single-Cell Analysis : Deepest Differences (Nature)
One Cell at a Time (Nature Reviews Cancer)
Researchers Make Progress Towards Single-Cell Sequencing (Genome Web)
With New Method CSHL team is able to infer how tumors evolve and spread (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory News)
Single Cell Sequencing Offers Peek Into Breast Tumor Evolution (Genome Web)
Young Investigator Award: Dr. Nicholas Navin (In Sequence Magazine)

2010

Single-Cell Sequencing Reveals Subpopulations of Cancer Cells (Genome Web)
Examining Individual Tumor Cells (MIT Technology Review)
A Family Tree in a Tumor (Nature Methods)