Career Enhancement Program
Career Enhancement Program
Director: Jennifer Wargo, M.D., M.M.Sc; Co-Director: Stephanie Watowich, Ph.D.
Based on our experience in developing the careers of melanoma investigators, our Career Enhancement Program continues to aggressively recruit junior as well as established faculty members for a melanoma career focus with special emphasis on the inclusion of qualified minorities and women, to become leaders in melanoma research. We will provide at least one year of career and research mentorship (clinical- and/or laboratory-based, as appropriate for that person). Individualized career enhancement plans may include didactic courses, melanoma seminars and rounds, grant-writing and protocol development, attendance at national melanoma and/or cancer meetings, and completing and publishing a translational melanoma cancer research project. We will monitor the success of our awardees and provide long-term mentorship support and advocacy even after the funding for the specific Career Enhancement Program funding ends.
Solicitations for applications are published each spring; contact Viji Ramachandran, Ph.D. for details.
2023 Awardees
Keri L Schadler, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics Research
"Exploiting the metabolic regulating effects of exercise to treat melanoma"
Zhicheng Zhou, PhD, Instructor, Department of Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
"Determining the impact of ADAR1 Expression on response to anti-PD-1/anti-PDL-1 immunotherapy in melanoma"
Maria A Cortez, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology Research
"Bone morphogenetic proteins as novel targets to overcome immunotherapy resistance in melanoma"
Noha Abdelwahab Hassan, MD, MSc, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology
"A phase II study to assess the safety and efficacy of tocilizumab in combination with the ipilimumab and nivolumab in patients with advanced melanoma"
Past Awardees
2022
Amit Moran, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Head and Neck Surgery
“Neural Regulation of the Immune Response in Melanoma”
Chibawanye I. Ene, M.D., Ph.D., Neurosurgery Fellow, Department of Neurosurgery
“Uncovering metabolic pathway dependencies of BRAFV600E/AKT-1 driven melanoma brain metastasis in a spontaneous and immunocompetent mouse model of brain metastasis”
Keri L. Schadler, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics Research
“Exercise and anti-PD-1 combination therapy for melanoma”
2021
Jennifer L. McQuade, M.D., M.S., M.A., Assistant Professor, Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology
“A novel human-to-mouse fecal microbiota transplant model to examine the effect of diet-induced changes in the microbiota of anti-tumor immunity”
2020
Tracy Liu, Ph.D., Instructor, Department of Cancer Systems Imaging
“PET imaging of the innate immune system predicts immune checkpoint therapy response”
Sherise Ferguson, Associate Professor, Department of Neurosurgery
"Expanded Aims of original CEP project titled "Preclinical Modeling of Melanoma Leptomeningeal Disease (LMD) and Intrathecal Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy"
Devarati Mitra, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology
“Adjuvant radiation therapy for sentinel node positive melanoma”
Florian Muller, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Cancer Systems Imaging
“Targeting Immuno-therapy Resistant PTEN-deleted Tumors by Collateral Lethality”
2019
Sherise Ferguson, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurosurgery
"Preclinical Modeling of Melanoma Leptomeningeal Disease (LMD) and Intrathecal Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy"