Meet-the-Expert Sessions

Meet-the-Expert Sessions

*This program was organized by members of SITC's Early Career Scientist Committee.

The Meet-the-Expert Sessions focused on unique issues related to early career scientist career development and gave attendees the opportunity to interact with experts in key areas of immunotherapy. Information was provided on different relevant topics in a setting that fosters attendee/expert interactions and provides networking opportunities with leaders in the field. Experts answered questions and lead informal dialogue during a series of informal networking events to help provide guidance and career advancement advice.

Meet-the-Expert Sessions Organizers

  • Chair: Jessica Thaxton, PhD, MSCR – Medical University of South Carolina
  • Sarah Church, PhD – Nanostring Technologies
  • Zachary Cooper, PhD – AstraZeneca
  • Brendan Horton, PhD – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Abdul Rafeh Naqash, MD – National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health

Topics

Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 5:30–6:30 p.m. EST

  • Spinning Your Lab into a Small Business or Starting Your Own Startup Company
    • Lynda Chin, MD – Apricity Health LLC
    • Michael Milone, MD, PhD - University of Pennsylvania   
  • Career Path: The Big Pharma Industry Perspective
    • Mark Cobbold, PhD – AstraZeneca
    • Maria Jure-Kunkel, PhD - Genmab
    • Priti Hegde, PhD - Foundation Medicine

  • Partnering and Collaborating with Industry
    • William Redmond, PhD – Earle A. Chiles Research Institute
    • John Wrangle, MD - Medical University of South Carolina

    • Sophie Paczesny MD, PhD - Medical University of South Carolina

Thursday, Nov. 12 at 7:30–8:30 a.m. EST

  • Career Building/What’s Next for Medical Students/Medical Residents
    • Jason Luke, MD – University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
  • Clinical-Translational Research in Immunology with Focus on Fellows and Early Career Clinicians
    • Elizabeth Mittendorf, MD, PhD – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
    • Andras  Heczey – Baylor College of Medicine
    • Stephanie Goff – National Cancer Institute Surgery Branch

  • Gaining a Network and Leveraging Support
    • Rieneke Van de Ven, PhD – VU University Medical Center Amsterdam
    • Jennifer McQuade, PhD – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Thursday, Nov. 12 at 5:30–6:30 p.m. EST

  • Basic-Translational Research in Immunology
    • Sylvia Formenti, MD – Weill Cornell Medicine
    • Marcela Maus, MD, PhD – Massachusetts General Hospital
    • Sergio Rutella, MD, PhD, FRCPath – Nottingham Trent University
    • Chrystal Paulos, PhD – Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
    • Gregory Lesinski, PhD, MPH – Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University
    • Johnathan Powell, MD, PhD – Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

    • Nir Hacohen, PhD – Broad Institute

    • Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD – Harvard Medical School
    • Gordon Freeman – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Friday, Nov. 13, at 7:30–8:30 a.m. EST

  • Immunotherapy Based Clinical Trials and Research
    • Doug Johnson, MD, MSCI – Vanderbilt University Medical Center
    • Elad Sharon, MD, PhD – National Cancer Institute
    • Siwen Hu-Lieskovan, MD, PhD – Huntsman Cancer Institute/University of Utah
    • Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD – Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
    • Robyn Gartrell, MD – Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital
    • Patrick Forde, MD –  Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
    • Miriam Merad, MD, PhD – Icahn School of Medicine
    • James Gulley, MD, PhD, FACP – Center for Cancer Research, NCI

  • Career Path: The Small Biotech Industry Perspective
    • Howard Kaufman, MD, FACS – Immuneering Corporation 
    • Harlan Robins – Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation


Faculty Question and Answer
Learn why you should attend this program! Continue reading the following Q&As as program faculty talk about their professional experiences and the valuable discussions that will occur during the sessions.

Lynda Chin, MD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a cancer genomics scientist with over 250 scientific publications. I am currently President and CEO of Apricity Health, a next-generation precision medicine company I co-founded, with a mission to harness patient deep data and world-class clinical expertise at points of care to bridge the divide between academic and real-world medicine. A graduate of Brown University, I attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine during which I conducted molecular biology research in parallel of my clinical training, first at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in internal medicine then at Montefiore Medical Center in dermatology. I began my independent career as a solo practice dermatologist, learning first-hand what it meant to provide care on the front lines, an experience that has influenced my future career, particularly my passion to leverage technology to enable evidence-based care in the real-world setting. In 1998, I was recruited to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School where I rose to the rank of tenured professor and a senior associate member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. I conducted research spanning mouse models of human cancers, cancer genomics, functional genomics and personalized medicine. I held leadership positions in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project in the U.S., including serving on the executive subcommittee and leading the development of Firehose pipeline as co-PI at the Broad Institute. Internationally, I have been active in the International Cancer Genome Consortium since its inception. In 2011, I joined MD Anderson Cancer Center as the founding chair of the first Department of Genomic Medicine, with a focus on developing platform capabilities to accelerate the translation of scientific advances and democratization of care through technologies, data and analytics. In 2015, foreseeing the need for a new model to harness real-world health and health-related data, I created the Institute for Health Transformation as the Chief Innovation Officer for Health Affairs at the University of Texas System. I founded Project DOC (Diabetes Obesity Control) to develop REDI (Real-world Education, early Detection and Intervention), an innovative model for public-private partnership for technology-enabled care. REDI connects and facilitates data sharing across community stakeholders, from federally qualified health center, retailers to telecommunication company, with the goal of improving chronic care of the vulnerable populations. A mother of 3 teenagers, I am a serial entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded cancer therapeutics and biomarker companies. Apricity Health, my latest initiative, aims to develop digital medicine that puts world-class specialty expertise and real-time patient data in the hands of practicing clinicians to personalize care with precision, in-person at clinics or virtually at patient’s home, starting with management of treatment-related toxicities in cancer. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apricity has developed an end-to-end digital solution for workplace and school COVID-19 monitoring and risk management, with interoperable connection to virtual care of those affected to ensure timely intervention and health outcome.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
A normal work week (in pandemic time) involves non-stop virtual meetings - with potential customers, strategic collaborators (both industrial and academic) as well as investors. Other meetings are with internal teams in the company, strategizing and supervising the design/development/testing of new products...The most fun (and challenging) part of my job is to understand what tech can do versus what medicine needs in order to build something that is value-added, and can be adopted and paid for... and trying to do so with rapidly evolving tech, changing practice in medicine, as well as macro-environment of regulation and reimbursement. Somewhere in between meetings (and on weekends), I try to read/write/plan. The biggest difference between my normal work week now compared to my years in academia is the fact that, every meeting I have involves action and decision with impact. No committee discussion anymore.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
What I enjoy most is doing what I want to do, trying something new and never been done before, and not having a bureaucracy to deal with.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
We will discuss and answer questions about opportunities to apply one's clinical or scientific knowledge to industry, what factors to consider, and how to build a startup.

William Redmond, PhD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am an Associate Member and Director of the Immune Monitoring Laboratory at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute (EACRI) at the Providence Cancer Institute and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Oregon Health & Science University. Currently, my laboratory seeks to elucidate the mechanisms by which various immunotherapies augment CD8 T cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity and to identify biomarkers of response in cancer patients receiving immunotherapy treatments that may help identify those most likely to benefit from this approach. As Director of the EACRI Immune Monitoring Laboratory, I also oversees translational research efforts seeking to develop and implement state-of-the-art immune profiling assays for the evaluation of anti-tumor immunity in cancer patients. This includes analysis of peripheral blood, serum, and tumor tissue (fresh and/or FFPE) by multi-parameter flow cytometry, multiplex immunohistochemistry, and scRNA-seq.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
My typical work week includes mix of meetings with lab staff regarding projects, group meetings (lab and department seminars), data review, manuscript/grant writing, and teleconference calls with various collaborators (academic and industry.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I am grateful for my outstanding lab team and colleagues at our Institute (EACRI, Portland, OR). I also enjoy the daily interactions with my team and discussing recent data/projects and seeing how we are able to make a difference for patients with cancer.


Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
I would like to discuss my background and experience with regards to forming collaborations with industry partners and my experiences ranging from small biotechs to large pharma and some of the benefits/challenges with different types of companies.

dca02f00-bed9-49e4-885f-b5ce6ecf9429_1_luke_upmc_headshot_20190514-thumbnail.pngJason Luke, MD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Hillman Cancer Center where I am the Director of the Cancer Immunotherapeutics Center. I specialize in the management of patients with melanoma and early phase drug development (particularly novel immunotherapeutics and biomarkers of immunotherapy activity). I have been a lead national investigator on clinical trials of immunotherapy agents including but not limited to anti-PD1/L1, CTLA4, LAG3, TIM3, GITR, OX40, CD137, CD40, inhibitors of indolamine-dioxygenase (IDO), adenosine A2a receptor and arginase as well as agonists of STING and oncolytic virus. My major research translational research is focused on using large scale informatics to advance the field of cancer immunotherapy. I received my M.D. from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago. I then pursued internship and residency at the Boston University Medical Center followed by medicine and medical oncology fellowships at Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Following fellowship, I was a tenure-track, Type 1 Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School as well as Staff Physician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Thereafter I was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. I am actively involved in several professional societies including the Society for Melanoma Research, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO). I have served as the chair of the education committee and as a member of the scientific committee for the melanoma track of the ASCO annual meeting. I have received several awards for research and clinical care including the Melanoma Research Foundation Humanitarian Award, Crain’s 40 under 40, Department of Defense Career Development Award, Paul Calabresi Career Development in Clinical Oncology Award (K12), ASCO Merit Award as well as Young Investigator Awards from the Melanoma Research Alliance, the Cancer Research Foundation and the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO. My research has been supported by ASCO, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the National Cancer Institute.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
Monday AM - Clinic 50-75% of patients on protocol / Monday PM - research time and Phase I team org meetings
Tues AM - Cancer Immunotherapeutics Center and Tumor Immuno-Informatics Lab meetings / Tues PM research time
Wed AM - Clinic and Melanoma team meeting / Wed PM research time
Thurs - Research time
Fri AM - Research time and TIIL end of week re-org / Fri PM - mostly clinical trial investigator calls

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I love working at the intersection of mechanism based medicine/oncology, bringing new cancer treatments to patients, simultaneous with the patient care and ethics of taking care of patients facing uncertainty associated with progression beyond standard therapy. There were many points in my career path where I might have chosen another direction but I love what I do and am enormously grateful to be in the position that I am. That being said, I continue to have many interests within oncology and beyond. Especially in these uncertain times - who knows what the future holds!

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
Mentorship, organizational approaches, expectation setting, and realistic goals to advance ones career by station.

https://planion-cloud-convert.s3.amazonaws.com/html/planion/sitc/sitc20/cache/37dca1b1-f21c-43d1-b512-e5c46834b046_1_sog_3199_18-thumbnail.pngElizabeth A. Mittendorf, MD, PhD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am the Robert and Karen Hale Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology and the director of the Breast Immuno- Oncology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I focus her clinical and laboratory efforts on the study of breast cancer with a specific interest in immunotherapy.I have been the principal investigator on numerous trials investigating cancer vaccines, including the phase III PRESENT study evaluating a CD8 T-cell-eliciting vaccine in the adjuvant setting, and an investigator-initiated multicenter phase II trial investigating vaccination in combination with trastuzumab in HER2-positive patients. I am also the principal investigator on two investigator-initiated presurgical studies evaluating immune checkpoint blockade agents in breast cancer patients. The current focus of my laboratory work is determining the impact of standard and experimental therapies on immunologic aspects of the tumor microenvironment to inform rational trials of immunotherapeutic agents in breast cancer. I am also investigating novel targets for vaccine strategies. In addition to my work evaluating breast tumor immunology and immunotherapy, I have published extensively on a multitude of subjects related to breast cancer and surgical management of the disease, to include incorporation of biologic factors into staging, management of the axilla, and surgery following receipt of neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
I spend a half day in the clinic and full day in the OR. The remainder of my time is spent overseeing research activities - for my own lab group, the larger Breast Oncology Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Department of Surgery at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I enjoy being in a position where I can mentor and sponsor more junior faculty members and trainees. Related to this, I enjoy helping to establish programs and infrastructure that facilitate research being done by mentees and other members of our Breast Oncology Program.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
I am happy to cover any topics of interest to those at the table but would suggest that, as a physician scientist, I would be well positioned to discuss: 1) balancing clinical and research responsibilities, 2) leveraging access to patients to perform impactful research, and 3) how to navigate barriers in establishing a career as a physician scientist.

https://planion-cloud-convert.s3.amazonaws.com/html/planion/sitc/sitc20/cache/bedcb6ce-c90c-4f76-8da6-7676f47cbd00_1_0-thumbnail.pngRieneke van de Ven, PhD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I lead the tumor immunology research within the Tumor biology section of the Department of Otolaryngology | Head and Neck surgery at Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, Cancer Center Amsterdam (CCA) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. My research focuses on understanding the tumor microenvironment and immune suppressive features of head and neck cancers. While the group mostly focuses on studying human head and neck cancers, some in vivo mouse studies are being performed. I am a member of the Scientific Research Committee of the CCA, who review clinical protocols prior to submission to the local IRB, as well as internal and external grants from members of the CCA institute. I am involved with the organisation of courses and delivery of seminars for Bachelor and Master courses within the VU university and the training of Bachelor and Master students in the lab. I obtained my PhD degree in 2009 after training at the VUmc department of Pathology and did my first postdoc at that same institute at the department of Medical Oncology in the lab of Prof. dr. Tanja de Gruijl. Here I worked on the characterisation of dendritic cell subsets in human tissues such as skin, lymph nodes and tumor. After a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship in tumor immunology (2011-2013), in the lab of Dr. Bernard Fox at the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, Providence Cancer Center in Portland, Oregon, I returned to the VUmc and worked as junior group leader in the lab of Prof. de Gruijl for five years until May 2018 when I was appointed as staff member at my current department.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
My workday starts at home, when my two kids are still in bed, going through my emails, followed by getting everyone to daycare, school or work in time. My work at the office entails meetings with the tumor biology section as well as with collaborating PIs, close interactions with PhD students and research technicians on current projects and discussing data and new experimental set-ups. I am involved in teaching within the VU University and training bachelor and master students in the lab. In addition to that I attend lectures, perform data analyses, write grants, write and review manuscripts and manage internal and external collaborations. When fresh tumor samples come in, I often help out in the lab by performing flow staining and analyses. After picking up the kids from daycare, and putting them to bed, I usually work some additional hours from home. On Friday I have my mom-day and spend time with the kids, and only occasionally check my work email.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I enjoy training and interacting with junior lab members (postdocs, PhD students, technicians, bachelor/master students). What I like about my career now are multiple things: I like how much freedom I have to be creative and let the data lead the direction of the research. I like that I can focus on multiple different projects at the same time and broaden my horizons by also including molecular profiling to the immune profiling. I am happy that after many years of uncertainty as a postdoc, I don't have to worry about getting grants for my own salary anymore, although there is still the pressure of getting the funding in for my group members. I love that science is so international and that with time you create a network of colleagues and friends around the world. Would I have done anything differently? I could have been more efficient in publishing my work, but sometimes you have to prioritise family over work, and that does not mean you won't eventually achieve your goals.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
The topic of my table is: Gaining a Network and Leveraging Support. I would like to discuss the importance of interacting with scientists within your own institution and outside and don't be shy! Ask (stupid) questions at conferences, interact with people you don't know, attend those early career events and stand up for yourself. Building a network and creating network occasions have been very crucial in my career and truly can help you achieve your goals. Go the extra mile, put in effort in helping others with their grant submissions or papers, suggest grant collaborations yourself, happily accept when someone asks you to stand in for them. And also, acknowledge people for supporting you and share your research or career goals with your mentors/department head, they might be able to help you using their own network.

https://planion-cloud-convert.s3.amazonaws.com/html/planion/sitc/sitc18/cache/1280a017-25cc-42cb-acd1-ab462f321969_1_maus_marcela-thumbnail.pngMarcela V. Maus, MD, PhD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am the Director of Cellular Immunotherapy at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and an Attending Physician in the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cell Therapy division of Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. I am an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and an Associate Member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. I am a translational physician-scientist in the field of immunology, particularly as it relates to cancer. My lab focuses on the design, generation, and use of innovative forms of immune cell engineering, including chimeric antigen receptors. My laboratory investigates basic mechanisms of human immunology to design and test novel immune-based therapeutic interventions in vitro, in mouse models, and in patients. I received my S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. I trained in internal medicine at University of Pennsylvania and in hematology and medical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering and am board-certified in these three disciplines. My laboratory research training was focused on gene and cell therapies, and occurred in the laboratories of Dr. Katherine High, Dr. Michel Sadelain, and Dr. Carl June.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
Since the shut-down there has been some readjusting and repositioning to my work week.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I enjoy every aspect of my rewarding career.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
N/A at this time.

Sergio Rutella, MD, PhD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I am a GMC-licensed hematologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (London, UK) with a broad background in tumor immunology, leukemia biology and stem cell transplantation. I received my M.D. from the Catholic University Medical School of Rome in 1993 (summa cum laude), followed by residency and fellowship in Hematology in 1997 (with honors) and Ph.D. in Experimental Hematology in 2001 (with honors).Before joining the John van Geest Cancer Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) as the Professor of Cancer Immunotherapy and Research Lead for Biosciences, I was the Executive Director of Clinical Research at Sidra Medical & Research Centre (now Sidra Medicine), Doha, Qatar (2014-2016) and served as the Chairman of Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine at the Bambino Gesú Children’s Hospital in Rome, Italy, from 2012 to 2014. Previous to these posts, I was Consultant Hematologist at the Bambino Gesú Children’s Hospital (2011-2012) and Consultant Hematologist and Assistant Professor of Hematology at the Catholic University Medical School in Rome (2000-2011). I received the Vice-Chancellor’s Outstanding Researcher Award (Established Researcher) from Nottingham Trent University in 2019 and merit awards from the American Association of Immunologists in 2011, 2006, 2003 and 2002. My current research efforts focus on the mechanisms mediating immune dysfunction in patients with leukemia and on therapeutic strategies to revert immune suppression and improve clinical outcome in patients with cancer. My group at NTU is currently analyzing blood and bone marrow transcriptional profiles as a means to investigate the immunobiology of acute leukemias and to provide a basis for the discovery of biomarker immune signatures in patients receiving T-cell engagers for relapsed/refractory AML. I have published 216 scientific articles and 11 book chapters, and have supported my research through competitive grants (>£4,620,000) from National and International funding bodies as well as commercial partners. I currently serve as the Co-Chair of the Clinical & Biomarker Data Sharing Subcommittee of the SITC and has teaching experience at both undergraduate and post-graduate level, with teaching contracts in hematological oncology, stem cell biology, virology and immunology.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
Grant writing, manuscript writing, staff supervision, administration.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I enjoy working with an international team of clinicians and scientists. I wish I had established this earlier during my career path.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
Immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukemia; identification of immune predictors of therapeutic success and failure.


https://planion-cloud-convert.s3.amazonaws.com/html/planion/sitc/sitc20/cache/7ce23a9c-1b1e-4d90-af3e-3a8e6aecb69e_1_14_sitc_howard_kaufmann__michael_hoetzel_dgph_7-thumbnail.pngHoward Kaufman, MD
Please provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.
I have been a leading authority on tumor immunotherapy for the treatment of melanoma. I pioneered the development of recombinant viral vectors encoding eukaryotic tumor antigens and immune modulatory genes for cancer therapy and have conducted over 50 cancer vaccine and immunotherapy clinical trials. I led the first successful phase III trial of an oncolytic herpes virus that demonstrated clinical benefit in patients with melanoma resulting in the first FDA approval of an oncolytic virus for the treatment of cancer. I also recently completed a positive clinical trial demonstrating therapeutic responses of a new PD-L1-directed monoclonal antibody in patients with Merkel cell carcinoma. I have maintained a funded laboratory in tumor immunology for nearly 20 years. I was born in Chicago, Illinois and received my MD degree from Loyola University, completed a residency in General Surgery at Boston University and fellowship training in Tumor Immunology and Surgical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute. I have previously held appointments as Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology and Associate Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University, inaugural Director of the Rush University Cancer Center, and Associate Director for Clinical Science of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. I have published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers, books, review articles and abstracts and serve on the editorial board of the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer, The Oncologist and Journal of Translational Medicine. I am a member of numerous professional societies and served as President of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. I was the recipient of several awards including the Daland Prize, MRF Humanitarian Award and UIC Distinguished Alumnus Award. I have been appointed to the Board of Directors of several professional organizations, including the Melanoma Research Foundation, Melanoma Research Alliance, Commission on Cancer, American Cancer Society-Eastern Division and the University of Illinois Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I am currently Head of Research and Development at Immuneering Corporation and maintains an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School and am part of the melanoma service at Massachusetts General Hospital.

What does a normal work week look like for you?
I have a very eclectic work day that includes planning and review of basic science experiments and animal models, seeing patients in the clinic and providing active treatment and management of toxicity and pursuing grants, manuscripts and presentation preparation. I also spend time teaching students and fellows and interact with investors, pharmaceutical companies and CROs.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?
I love my current role which is a nice combination of early phase drug development and patient care. There are certain days when having a singular focus would be simpler but I very much enjoy seeing the two sides of immunotherapy - developing new treatments and being part of getting patients through therapy. In retrospect, my experiences and choices have all helped shape my current potential and I am very satisfied with my professional career.

Please provide a brief summary of what topics you would like to cover at your table.
I would like to discuss the benefits and challenges of choosing to work across disciplines and the rewards that this can bring. It is often difficult to find a niche in existing institutional constructs but both scientific breakthroughs and individual success come from bridging barriers and being an "out-of-the box" thinker. Finding your true scientific and/or clinical interests and then using existing infrastructures and institutional resources to guide you into a leadership role to pursue your goals is possible. I also think finding a mentor and being able to identify good and appropriate mentorship is important for early career professionals.

Intended Audience

The audience for this educational program includes graduate, medical, and post-baccalaureate students; clinical fellows; post-doctoral fellows; tenure-track investigators, government employees, and scientists in general; and industry/pharma scientists and employees. Space for this event is limited and priority will be given to early career scientists.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of this activity, participants should be able to:

  • Address most of their open questions and concerns on the selected topic
  • Make informed decisions about their career development and research projects
  • Establish connections with experts in their field of interest

Continuing Education

This program is not eligible for continuing education credit.

Schedule At-a-Glance

Monday, Nov. 9
Pre-Conference Programs
(Additional Fees Required)

Immunotherapy Resistance and Failure

Workshop on Engineering Immune Cells for Cancer Therapy

Tuesday, Nov. 10
Pre-Conference Programs
(Additional Fees Required)

Primer on Tumor Immunology and Cancer Immunotherapy™

Grant Writing Workshop
Wednesday, Nov. 11
Annual Meeting

35th Anniversary Annual Meeting

Thursday, Nov. 12
Annual Meeting

35th Anniversary Annual Meeting

Friday, Nov. 13
Annual Meeting

35th Anniversary Annual Meeting

Saturday, Nov. 14
Annual Meeting

35th Anniversary Annual Meeting

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