These $3,000 stipends support summer research projects by graduate or medical school students over an 8-to-12-week period for cancer-related basic, clinical/translational, or population science research conducted under the mentorship of a UVM Cancer Center Full or Associate Member. In addition to the student stipend, each mentor’s lab is awarded up to $1,000 to cover project-related expenses.
Nine exceptional applications were judged to merit award:
| Student Researcher | Mentor | Research Project
|
| Jennifer Chen | Thomas Ahern, PhD, MPH Surgery | Racial and geographic disparities in breast lymphedema |
| Randi Gravelle | Brian Cunniff, PhD Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Mitochondrial dynamics support breast cancer tumorigenesis
|
| Kanayo Ikeh | Nimrat Chatterjee, PhD Microbiology & Molecular Genetics | Unraveling the functional dynamics of REV1 during cancer cell response to therapy
|
| Ellen Mats | Shahid Ahmed, MBBS Hematology & Oncology | The Influence of Bacteria on the Formation of an Immune-Escaped Bladder Cancer: A Pilot Correlative Study
|
| Gopika Nandagopal | Alan Howe, PhD Pharmacology | Investigating the STK11 C-terminal domain in lung cancer
|
| Arjune Nibber | David Seward, MD, PhD Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Characterization of STK11 Missense Variants Using Prime Editing
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| Shannon Prior, Juckett Summer Student Scholar | Paula Deming, PhD Biomedical & Health Sciences | Investigating metabolic rewiring in progression of STK11-null lung cancer: glutamine dependence and the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway
|
| Alyssa Richman | Seth Frietze, PhD Biomedical & Health Sciences | Epigenetic Analysis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
|
| Jennifer Toner | Peter Kaufman, MD Hematology & Oncology | Correlating Properties of Breast Cancer Organoids to Patient's Tumor Information |
In addition to the research projects, the students will participate in an end-of-program poster session.