Early Career Development & Pilot Awards
Pilot and educational development awards offered to provide support to early career investigators and trainees developing careers in cancer research at Columbia across the basic, translational, clinical and population science continuum. Participation by individuals from underrepresented groups is strongly encouraged in all funding mechanisms.
HICCC Early Career Development Pilot Award
Focus: Cancer research (basic, translational, clinical, or population science).
Who Should Apply: Senior postdoctoral fellows (5 yrs. of postdoctoral experience), instructors and associate research scientists who are transitioning to a faculty position, and who will apply for career development grants from the NIH (e.g. K01, K08, K23, K99-R00), other governmental agencies, and/or from foundations and professional societies.
Award Amount: $100,000 for 1 year (includes matching funds from awardee department)
Applications typically open in January. Up to 3 awards given per cycle.
Past Awardees:
Past Awardees
2024 Awardees:
- Matthew Gallitto, MD, Radiosensitization and Targeted Drug Delivery in Diffuse Midline Glioma
- Alvaro Curiel Garcia, MSc, PhD, Defining synthetic lethal dependencies of Ras inhibition in pancreatic cancer
2023 Awardees:
- Monica Kasbekar, MD, PhD, Targeting the Drivers of Clonal Hematopoiesis to Mitigate Clonal Expansion and AML Development
- Yu Sun, MD, PhD, Dissecting IDH-mutant dependence and intratumor heterogeneity during astrocytoma progression
- Karen Dunbar, PhD, Unraveling the functional role of cancer-associated fibroblast subpopulations in esophageal carcinomas.
2022 Awardees:
- Alexandros Papachristodoulou, PhD, Correlative studies to investigate the role and clinical relevance of mitochondrial DNA alterations in aggressive prostate cancer.
- Wen-Hsuan Wendy Lin, MD, PhD, Targeting the tumor microenvironment by duvelisib in peripheral T-cell lymphomas
2021 Awardees:
- Karie Runcie, MD, Combination Anti-PD-1 and IL-1 Blockade prior to Nephrectomy in Localized Renal Cell Carcinoma to Evaluate Novel Targets for Treatment of Renal Cell Carcinoma.
- Uchenna Unachukwu, PhD, The Role of HMGA2 in Neurocristopathic tumorigenesis in TS and LAM.
2020 Awardees:
- Ali Soroush, MD, Personalized upper GI cancer risk calculation using an EHR-based algorithm.
- Osama Al Dalahmah, MD, PhD, Defining the Niche of Glioma Recurrence Using Single Nuclei RNA Sequencing.
- Ruth White, MD, PhD, Muscarinic regulation of the immune microenvironment in pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
- Alessandro Vasciaveo, PhD, Elucidating cellular rewiring as a mechanism of drug resistance in lethal prostate cancer.
HICCC-Clinical Trialist Early Career Development Scholars Award (Clinical Trialist Scholars)
Focus: Career development support for early faculty/trainees seeking a career track as a Clinical Investigator and/or Principal Investigator for clinical trials.
Who Should Apply: Clinical post-doctoral fellows/research scientists and early career faculty who are transitioning to a faculty position and will apply for career development grants from the NIG, other governmental agencies, and/or foundations and professional societies.
Award Amount: $100,000 a year for 2 years (includes matching funds from the awardee department of $25,000)
Applications typically open in January. Up to 4-6 awards expected per cycle.
Past Awardees:
2024 Awardees:
- Andrew Lenis, MD , Patient-derived tumoroids for the prediction of chemotherapy response in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.
- Gill Brian, MD, Pre-clinical Evaluation of Dual mTORC1/2 Inhibition in Tumor Associated Seizures.
- Mariam El-Ashmawy, MD, PhD, Targeting KRAS Amplification in Human Cancer.
2023 Awardees:
- Joel T. Gabre, MD, Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Patient-Derived Organoids (PDOs) and Personalized Oncology Strategies to Chemoradiation Resistance.
- Ryan H. Moy, MD, PhD, Targeting the FAK and MAPK pathways in diffuse gastric cancer.
- Maria Diaz Ordonez, MD, Multimodality imaging for distinction between pseudoprogression and early tumor progression in glioblastoma.
HICCC Edward P. Evans Center for Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) Fellowship Award
Focus: Advancing understanding of MDS.
Who Should Apply: Early-stage career developing fellows engaged in research directly focused on MDS or from related areas that can leverage expertise, knowledge, and approaches to advance understanding of MDS. Open to PhD, MD, or MD/PhD fellows supervised by faculty members of the Edward P. Evans Center for MDS.
Award Amount: $100,000 for 1 year
Applications typically open in March. Up to 2 awards given per cycle.
Past Awardees:
2023 Awardees:
- Xiaolu Zhu, PhD, Investigate the Impact of Genotoxic Therapies on rDNA Instability at the Single Cell Level and Its Role in Therapy-Induced MDS/AML
- Co-Investigator: Shan Zha, MD, PhD
- Yong-Oon Ahn, PhD, Modeling Human Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential (CHIP), MDS, and AML Using in Vitro Hematopoiesis from Gene-Edited Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
2022 Awardees:
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Rossella Labella, PhD, Functional-Dysfunctional Mitochondrial Exchange Between Mesenchymal and Dysplastic Stem Cells Drives MDS to AML Transformation
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Junsong Zhou, PhD, Understanding the Role of Epitranscriptional Regulation in MDS Pathogenesis
Education and Pilot Awards for Trainee Associate Members
The Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination Core (CRTEC) aims to provide rigorous training in cancer research and career enhancement programs that prepare trainees for a variety of disciplines in biomedical cancer research and healthcare. Learn more about becoming a TAM member.
Members of the Trainee Associate Membership program (TAM) can apply for the following awards and grants.
HICCC Trainee Associate Membership Program Predoctoral Pilot Award
Focus: Support for pre-doctoral Trainee Associate Members in early stages of their research project. Funds will be applied to the use of a HICCC Shared Resource.
Who Should Apply: Pre-doctoral graduate students at CUIMC.
Award Amount: $5,000
Applications typically open in November. Up to 4 awards expected per cycle.
Past Awardees:
2023 Awardees:
- Nicolae Ciobu Zubenco, PhD, Understanding the role of tumor microenvironment remodeling and antitumor immunity in overnutrition-promoted hepatocellular carcinoma
- Kate Cunningham, Characterizing the Metastatic Kinetics of Pathogenic TP53 Mutation R282W in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma
2022 Awardees:
- Nadja Zhakula-Kostadinova, Investigating vulnerabilities associated with chromosome arm aneuploidy in squamous cancer
- Gizem Efe, MA, Comparative analysis on the functional role and mechanisms of distinct p53 mutations in promoting metastasis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC)
- Anna-Liisa Sepp, MS, Optimizing T cell Ex Vivo Expansion for Immunotherapy with Biomaterials
2021 Awardees:
- Carla Bertulfo, Identifying regulators of gamma secretase inhibitor sensitivity and resistance in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
- Divya Bhansali, Nucleic acid-binding nanoparticles for managing pain and progression in oral squamous cell carcinoma
- Alina Lin Li, Elucidating the Role of FRA1 in Kras-Driven Pancreatic Acinar-to-Ductal Metaplasia
- Ester Calvo Fernández, Targeting Master Regulators of Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma
HICCC Trainee Associate Membership Program Postdoctoral Pilot Award
Focus: Support for Trainee Associate Members post-docs in early stages of their research project. Funds will be applied to the use of a HICCC Shared Resource.
Who Should Apply: MD or MD/PhD clinical fellows/instructors, PhD postdoctoral fellows and associate research scientists at CUIMC.
Award Amount: $10,000
Applications typically open in November. Up to 4 awards expected per cycle.
Past Awardees:
2023 Awardees:
- Alvaro Curiel Garcia, MSc, PhD, Pharmacological targeting of tumor dependencies in pancreatic cancer
- Alvaro Cuesta-Dominguez, PhD, Unraveling the pathogenic and therapeutic impact of Tenascin X matricellular protein in transformation of myelodysplasia to acute myeloid leukemia
- Pamela Graney, PhD, MS, Modeling Breast Cancer-Induced Perturbations to Hematopoiesis in Engineered Bone Marrow
- Johannes Melms, MD, Dissecting the impact of genomic variants on hallmarks of T cell antitumor activity
- Soonbum Park, PhD, Investigating Novel Mechanisms and Treatments for Metastatic Bladder Cancer
- Jane Xu, PhD, Credential Stag2-mediated chromatin looping in myelodysplastic syndrome
2022 Awardees:
- Christine Moon, Investigating Tumor-reactive Stem-like CD8+ T cells by Organoid Modeling of the Human Colorectal Cancer Microenvironment
- James Swann, Role of emergency myelopoiesis in clonal evolution and leukemic stem cell emergence in AML
- Clara Reglero Gomez, Role of the S1P signaling pathway in the pathogenesis of angioimmunoblastic T-cell Lymphoma
- Alexandros Papachristodoulou, An emerging role for metformin and NKX3.1 loss in precision prostate cancer intervention and active surveillance
- John Christin, Epigenetic regulation of luminal identity in urothelial carcinoma
2021 Awardees:
- Kara Cicero, MD, Prevalence and Risk Factors of Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance in a Black Sub-Saharan African Population
- Ricardo Cruz-Acuña, PhD, Engineered in vitro organoid culture platform reveals the contributions of cell intrinsic and extrinsic factors in the pathogenesis of esophageal adenocarcinoma
- Wen-Hsuan Wendy Lin, MD, PhD, Mutational landscape, transcriptomic signatures and the role of microenvironment in peripheral T-cell lymphoma tumor evolution
- Jinqiu Lu, PhD, Transitional states and novel drivers of lineage plasticity in castration-resistant prostate cancer
HICCC Trainee Associate Membership Travel Award
Focus: Travel support for Trainee Associate Members to present their poster/oral research at a cancer-related conference.
Who Should Apply: Trainee Associate Members accepted for presentation at an upcoming conference.
Award Amount: $1,000
Applications are typically open in January, April, July, and September. 12 awards expected per year.
Past Awardees:
2024 Awardees:
- Suwan Ding
- Shira Eisman
- Michael May
- Laura Quevedo Palacio
- Oluwaseyi Adeuyan
- Gizem Efe
- Jin Qian
- Lawrence Wu
2023 Awardees:
- Alessandro Vasciaveo
- Zhongming Hu
- Somnath Tagore
- Nicole Guilz
- Kristine Lacuna
- Francisca Nunes de Almeida
- Zachary Walsh
- Tomer Yaron
- Wisdom Yevudza
- Rosssella Labella
- Samuel Flashner
- Joan Castellano Perez
- Celine Schreidah
- Jessica Armand
- Soonbum Park
- Oluwaseyi Adeuyan
- Jane Xu
2022 Awardees:
- Yimeng Fang
- Alice Shin
- Thi Thu Trang Nguyen
- Monica Kasbekar
- Karen Dunbar
- Jeffrey Bellah
- Lorenzo Tomassoni
- Daniel Naveed Tavakol
2021 Awardees:
- Hong-Jian Wei
- Carlen Yuen
- Elizabeth Goldberg
- Peter Wang
- Patricia Ho
- Casey Ager
- Meri Rogava
- Samuel Flashner
- Alina Li
- Ricardo Cruz-Acuna
- Gizem Efe
- Alexander Wei
- Alessandro Vasciaveo
- Somnath Tagore
- Kathleene Ulanday
Trainee Associate Membership Paper of the Year Award
Focus: Award to recognize outstanding research publication for Trainee Associate Members.
Who Should Apply: The trainee must be 1st author, co-1st author, or senior author and the manuscript must be an original research paper published in a peer-reviewed journal on a cancer topic
Award Amount: $500
Awards typically open in January. Up to 6 awards expected per cycle.
Past Awardees:
2024 Awardees:
- Marie Hasselluhn, PhD, Tumor Explants Elucidate a Cascade of Paracrine SHH, WNT, and VEGF Signals Driving Pancreatic Cancer Angiosuppression
- Patricia Ho, MD, PhD, The CD58-CD2 axis is co-regulated with PD-L1 via CMTM6 and shapes anti-tumor immunity
- Connor Kinslow, MD, Association of MGMT Promoter Methylation With Survival in Low-grade and Anaplastic Gliomas After Alkylating Chemotherapy
- Zhiming Li, PhD, Asymmetric distribution of parental H3K9me3 in S phase silences L1 elements
- Mengrui Liu, PhD, Inhalable extracellular vesicle delivery of IL-12 mRNA to treat lung cancer and promote systemic immunity
- Thomas Savage, MD, PhD, Chemokines expressed by engineered bacteria recruit and orchestrate antitumor immunity
2023 Awardees:
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Aleksandar Obradovic, MD, PhD, Immunostimulatory Cancer-Associated Fibroblast Subpopulations Can Predict Immunotherapy Response in Head and Neck Cancer
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Yinglu Li, PhD, Histone methylation antagonism drives tumor immune evasion in squamous cell carcinomas
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Kathleen Capaccione, MD, PhD, Evaluating the Combined Anticancer Response of Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy and FAP-Targeted Molecular Radiotherapy in Murine Models of Melanoma and Lung Cancer
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Jana Biermann, PhD, Dissecting the treatment-naive ecosystem of human melanoma brain metastasis
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Xu Zhang, PhD, Epigenome Programming by H3.3K27M Mutation Creates a Dependence of Pediatric Glioma on SMARCA4
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Alessandro Vasciaveo, OncoLoop: A Network-Based Precision Cancer Medicine Framework
2022 Awardees:
- Alexandros Papachristodoulou, PhD, NKX3.1 localization to mitochondria suppresses prostate cancer initiation
- Thi Thu Trang Nguyen, PhD, Aurora kinase A inhibition reverses the Warburg effect and elicits unique metabolic vulnerabilities in glioblastoma
- Shayan Dioun, MD, Uptake and Outcomes of Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping
- Johannes Melms, MD, PhD, Multimodal pooled Perturb-CITE-seq screens in patient models define mechanisms of cancer immune evasion
- Aleksandar Obradovic, MD, PhD, Single-cell protein activity analysis identifies recurrence-associated renal tumor macrophages
- Angelo Taglialatela, PhD, REV1-Polζ maintains the viability of homologous recombination-deficient cancer cells through mutagenic repair of PRIMPOL-dependent ssDNA gaps