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Congratulations to the 2023 Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigator Awardees

Alexandra Nikitas

The Cancer Research Foundation is pleased to announce the 2023 Young Investigator Awards

The Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigator Award is intended to launch a scientist’s career as a primary investigator in cancer research.  Too often, early career researchers find themselves slowed or even blocked by the fact that most funding requires primary data and proof of principle and yet there is very little financial backing available to support those first data sets.  These $100,000 grants, funded over two years, hope to fast-track some of the best new minds in cancer science leading to novel ideas and new innovations in the treatment, prevention, and cure of cancer. 

Mai Dang, MD, PhD | Assistant Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
YIA Project: Modulating Microglia to Enhance Pediatric Brain Tumor Treatment

Yogesh Goyal, PhD | Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
YIA Project: Tracing and controlling origins, dynamics, and consequences of rare-cell plasticity in cancer

Frederick Howard, MD | Instructor, University of Chicago
YIA Project: Integrating Pathologic and Radiographic Features to Predict Response to Chemotherapy in Early Breast Cancer

Melissa Mavers, MD, PhD | Assistant Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
YIA Project: Elucidating iNKT cell subset plasticity to inform cellular therapies for cancer and GVHD

Michael P. Meers, PhD | Assistant Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
YIA Project: High-resolution epigenomics to characterize heterochromatin lesions underlying clonal expansion in IDH-mutant AML

Caner Saygin, MD | Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
YIA Project: Decoding the evolution of TP53-mutant acute leukemias

Simon Schwörer, PhD | Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
Breakthrough Board Scholar
YIA Project: Novel systems to study the metabolic determinants of cancer-associated fibroblast heterogeneity