After his undergraduate years at UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Ferris received MD and PhD (Immunology) degrees at Johns Hopkins, followed by training in head and neck oncologic surgery. He joined the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in 2001, helping build an internationally recognized program in immunotherapy of head and neck cancer. He led the Cancer Immunotherapy program from 2007-2017, when he became Director of the Hillman Cancer Center. In 2024, Dr. Ferris was recruited back to UNC-Chapel Hill to lead the Lineberger Cancer Center and oversee oncology clinical services.

As a head and neck surgical oncologist and NIH-funded translational tumor immunologist for over 25 years, the primary focus of his group has been to drive integration of perioperative cancer immunotherapy using neoadjuvant “window of opportunity” trial designs, to understand response and resistance to approved agents and to test alternative, novel therapeutic targets, working with pharma and biotech companies. Dr. Ferris has also advanced NK and T cell adoptive therapies, oncolytic viral therapy, TLR agonists and intralesional therapies. He has led trials of immune correlatives in the serum and TME, targeting PD-(L)1, CTLA-4, and LAG-3. He was lead author of the phase III Checkmate-141, leading to the FDA approval of nivolumab for HNSCC in 2016. Recent work is studying optimal sequencing of PD-1 therapy with chemo- and radiation therapy. He serves on scientific advisory boards for several biotech companies.

Dr. Ferris has contributed to SITC extensively for over 20 years, serving as an at-large SITC Board member (2015-2018). He has been section editor of JITC’s Guidelines/Consensus Statements section since its inception. He has participated in multiple strategic planning retreats for SITC and helped lead the H&N cancer immunotherapy guidelines (CIG), one of the most highly cited CIG for JITC to date. Dr. Ferris has co-chaired and participated in many SITC committees/taskforces, including Annual Meeting/Program, Communications, Membership, Regulatory, and fellowship awards. Recently he was honored to participate in the SITC Women in Cancer Immunotherapy Network (WIN) program. As a leader of the Certificate in Cancer Immunotherapy program, which has been completed by hundreds of SITC members, he is helping create a 9^th “neoadjuvant IO” module. Dr. Ferris has recruited and mentored many young and mid-career faculty to develop successful careers in cancer immunotherapy, who now contribute impactfully to SITC’s mission. His work with other key societies such as ASCO, ASTRO, and AACR including basic science and clinical trials workshops provide perspective to advance SITC’s unique leadership. 

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

1. Overcoming barriers to non-responsiveness. Neoadjuvant trials are becoming mainstream in many tumor types and provide dynamic insights into biology and follow the adaptive and innate immune response to IO therapies. Novel single-cell and spatial technologies now permit highly refined understanding of the TME during therapy and novel combinations, which will be the basis for personalized immunotherapy. Moreover, combinatorial approaches must be guided by science and adaptive designs. Moving IO into earlier lines of therapy, including preoperatively and in cancer immunoprevention, will keep SITC at the forefront of the field. This requires supporting the science elucidating the interactions with targeted therapies, radiotherapies, radiopharmaceuticals and novel combinations.

SITC should promote the tools for gathering and integrating this information and developing the infrastructure for supporting personalized cancer immunotherapy, which is a key priority for the field. SITC’s goal of 100 new IO agents requires prioritizing the most promising agents and combinations to test, facilitating nimble and effective drug development. SITC can promote both grant writing and trial design tools for trainees to enhance biomarker use and novel discovery efforts.

2. Greater impact and use of immunotherapy on patients and practitioners. SITC should maintain and leverage its unique niche as the original, key society driving immuno-oncology. No other society has done what SITC has, and it will need to strategically partner while maintaining its unique identity and contributions. Through its many educational programs, meetings, and fellowships, SITC must re-evaluate how it educates scientists and practitioners. This effort has now shifted to non-immunologists who manage adverse events, refer patients for cancer immunotherapy, or may have begun integrating this new type of therapy into their oncology practice. We need to expand our educational outreach to physicians and researchers in other medical specialties, who will encounter patients receiving cancer immunotherapy and who may collaborate in the management of the immune-related side effects associated with this modality. Continuing to integrate and coordinate the stakeholders in diverse disciplines in academia, early phase discovery, biotechnology/pharma, and regulatory agencies is essential, to drive novel approaches like neoadjuvant therapies, single-cell and AI technologies to harness the evolving immune response to IO.

3. Expanding patients with deep and durable responses to cancer immunotherapy. With the success of cancer immunotherapy, the need for cost effectiveness research and demonstration of the value proposition is a rapidly emerging challenge for the field, which SITC can lead. There are many immuno-oncology agents in development, and these are often quite expensive once approved. It is very clear that the rising cost of medical care poses substantial challenges for society as a whole and must be sustainable. Developing innovative models for assessment of “value” and methods of reimbursement will also be critical for the optimal application and establishment of cancer immunotherapy strategies in the clinic. CAR-T cells result in exciting durable response rates, while some patients are not receiving these therapies due to cost as well as the bandwidth available to produce autologous T-cell treatments. SITC has a strong track record of assembling wide-ranging groups of stakeholders, such as bioengineers, immunologists, regulatory agencies, and industry, to synergize efforts and devise creative methods (in vivo CAR T delivery) to lower the cost and enhance the efficiency of delivery for these treatments. In addition, it is imperative to bring together payers, including private insurers and government agencies, to allow a broader span of patients to receive these treatments. This includes developing novel endpoints for drug approval that reflect the unique mechanisms of action and patterns of response, and building new, integrated models for scientific, clinical, regulatory, and payor collaboration in therapeutic development for dissemination into practice. SITC must play an important role in this area.

What is Your Vision for SITC?

My vision for SITC during this pivotal time for cancer immunotherapy is tightly aligned with SITC’s 6 strategic pillars. Now with IO as an established standard of care for many tumor types, we must broaden and advance SITC as a key home for practitioners and investigators through continuing education, training, trial design, and outcomes in the US and worldwide. The recent SITC strategic plan (2024-2026) and goal of 100 new IO agents by 2034 (#SITCquestfor100) must be supported wisely, in a resource-efficient manner. My experience leading complex organizations from a strategic, scientific, clinical and fiscally sound approach would benefit SITC at this key point in time. SITC must diversify and grow its revenue streams, as part of a refreshed 2026 strategic planning process. Leveraging value from our society and membership’s expertise is a priority, building beneficial collaborations beyond the annual and regional meetings.

SITC is a unique organization, whose niche interdigitates with academics, industry, regulatory and educational societies, advancing the field of immunotherapy in these exciting but challenging times of today’s funding environment and medical practice. Given the increasing integration of cancer immunotherapy into other societies/meetings, SITC should continue to evolve and broaden its unique identity, while providing a greater platform for clinical translation, reporting of results, and driving clinical trial designs and outcomes. Acknowledging the roles of national guidelines organizations, SITC must continue to leverage our grounding in the science behind IO. SITC should expand the Forward Fund and expand endowments to promote the next generation of SITC scientists.

SITC must remain an innovative and progressive scientific organization, recognizing that immuno-oncology agents may not work in all populations of ethnicities and races equally, and must be studied collaboratively in all populations. This has often been overlooked but may explain differences in outcomes, beyond the initial published trial results. Real world datasets can be facilitated with pharma partners within or after reporting their large registrational trials, which would benefit all groups eventually treated with IO therapies.

Charles (Chuck) Drake, MD, PhD, FAAP leads the prostate cancer / cross-cancer immuno-oncology group at Johnson and Johnson, there his lab-based team is responsible for discovering novel agents and mechanisms and developing those discoveries in the clinic. As a physician-scientist, his long-term research and clinical activities have focused on understanding the biology of the immune response to genitourinary (GU) cancers and leveraging that understanding to develop transformative medicines and treatment regimens. As a research scientist, Dr. Drake has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, review articles and book chapters.

Prior to joining Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine in 2020, Chuck led the GU oncology program at the Herbert Irving Cancer Center, Columbia University in New York. As the Milstein Family Professor of Medicine and Urology, Dr. Drake served as the Associate Director for Clinical Research in the Cancer Center and founded the Cancer Center’s human immune monitoring core. During his tenure at Columbia, he and his team built a strong portfolio of over 30 GU clinical trials, with a significant number of these investigator-initiated and translational in nature. Also while at Columbia, Dr. Drake’s lab at Columbia successfully published a number of articles in Cell, Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research and others.

Prior to joining Columbia, Chuck was a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University, there his lab played a key role in discovering LAG-3 as in immune checkpoint in cancer; IP on that invention was licensed to Bristol Myers Squibb and led to the development of the anti-LAG-3 antibody Relatlimab.

Dr. Drake received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University, earned his MD from the University of Colorado Medical Science Training Program and received his doctorate in Immunology from the National Jewish Center for Immunology. Clinically, Chuck completed his residency on the Osler Medical Service at Johns Hopkins, where he also did his fellowship in medical oncology. Dr. Drake is board-certified in medical oncology and sees GU patients at Columbia University.

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

One key issue facing the field of cancer immunotherapy is the need for us to move beyond immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) to more fully embrace additional modalities and combinations. While ICB has undoubtedly saved and prolonged tens of thousands of lives, second-generation targets, i.e. those other than CTLA-4, TIM-3 and LAG-3 have proven less tractable. Thus, I believe that cancer immunotherapy must continue to strive to encompass a broader palette, more fully investigating the role of T cell engagers (TCE), cell therapies, next-generation vaccines, and targeted cytokines, as well as the fascinating science behind these modalities.

The second issue worth highlighting is that of adoption, in my current role I’ve been stunned to learn how infrequently IO combinations like ipilimumab / nivolumab are utilized by community-based oncologists. Similarly, T cell engagers have faced challenges in terms of uptake, primarily due to concerns regarding toxicities like cytokine release syndrome (CRS). While perhaps more pedestrian than the deep basic and translational science SITC normally focuses upon, I believe that SITC can play in important role in democratizing IO beyond academic institutions.

What is Your Vision for SITC?

SITC has played a tremendous role in supporting basic science and translational science, as well as in the education of junior scientists in both academia and industry. I believe that SITC should continue to excel in those roles, while at the same time expanding its educational mission to include the practitioners who utilize and develop novel IO agents.

Dr. Finn is University of Pittsburgh Distinguished Professor of Immunology and Surgery and Founding Chair Emerita of the Department of Immunology. After receiving her PhD in Medical Microbiology at Stanford University in 1980 and completing her postdoctoral training in Immuno-oncology there in 1982, Dr. Finn started her research at Duke University and in 1991 moved to the University of Pittsburgh. After receiving her PhD in Medical Microbiology at Stanford University in 1980 and completing her postdoctoral training in Immuno-oncology there in 1982, Dr. Finn started her research at Duke University and in 1991 moved to the University of Pittsburgh. She gained prominence through her basic and applied research on tumor antigens and cancer vaccines. She served on multiple NCI study sections and was member of the NCI Board of Scientific Councilors. Dr. Finn is member of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) where she served as President in 2007/2008, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC). Dr. Finn received numerous awards including AAI Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) and Excellence in Mentoring Award (2026), AACR CIR Lloyd Old Cancer Immunology Prize (2017), SITC Richard Smalley Award (2019) and Distinguished Service Award (2025). In 2019 she was inducted into the inaugural class of AAI Distinguished Fellows and in 2022 became Fellow of the SITC Immuno-Oncology Academy. Dr. Finn has published over 250 articles, reviews and book chapters and is a frequently invited speaker, session chair or organizer of major national and international conferences.

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

1. Immunotherapy of solid tumors has given some impressive results, but the low clinical response rates, limited applicability to only some tumors and only some patients, and a high price tag are still unsolved problems. Enticed by the newest technical and computational might, we are only too eager to look for and find ever more differences between tumors and between patients. While that is a contribution to science, it yields at best a “whack-a-mole” approach to therapy. Identifying features that tumors and patients share may be a more promising path to a more broadly available and affordable immunotherapy.

2. Success of cancer immunotherapy depends on each patient’s immune system. We still don’t have an immune signature of a responder versus non-responder to therapy. Those signatures are likely to vary between pre-malignancy and early and late stages of invasive disease. They may not be that different for different forms of immunotherapy. They could help us predict if a patient is a candidate for immunotherapy and/or what type of immunotherapy.

3. There is still a lot more effort and investment in developing and testing immunotherapy in advanced disease and relatively little in cancer immunoprevention. Cancer vaccines and other immunomodulators are still primarily used as therapy. This approach ignores what we know about cancer immunosurveillance and the tumor escape from it. It misses opportunities to strengthen immune surveillance in the setting of pre-cancer or cancer risk, to improve the chances for immune elimination or for establishing life-long cancer control (equilibrium).

What is Your Vision for SITC?

SITC has become a very important platform for mainstream immunotherapy. It is well-positioned to also provide a welcoming home and more, if not equal time to new ideas or research a little outside of what everyone is doing. Let us as a community identify those ideas and provide support for webinars, small workshops, standing committees or dedicated sessions in the annual meetings. I envision SITC as a place where new ideas go to live.

Gregory B. Lesinski, PhD, MPH is a translational cancer immunologist focused on developing next-generation immunotherapies for patients with tumors that do not respond to current treatments. His work has helped shaped more than 29 clinical trials across multiple tumor types, ranging from first-in-human immunotherapy combinations to national cooperative group studies. These translational efforts have spanned pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, colorectal cancer and melanoma. As checkpoint blockade becomes standard across oncology, his research addresses one of the field's most pressing challenges: designing effective immune-based strategies for patients who have already been exposed to, or progressed on prior immunotherapy.

Dr. Lesinski completed doctoral training at the Medical College of Ohio in vaccine development and postdoctoral studies at The Ohio State University, where his research on cytokine signaling in patients contributed to multiple first-in-human immunotherapy combination clinical trials. He advanced from Research Assistant Professor to an independent tenure-track faculty member at Ohio State, leading studies that defined how cytokine signaling contributes to immune suppression in solid tumors. During this time, he completed an MPH through NCI K22-supported training to strengthen his expertise in clinical trial design and translational research. In 2016, he was recruited to the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University to launch a translational immunotherapy program focused on GI cancers resistant to immune-based therapies and was promoted to full Professor in 2021.

Dr. Lesinski currently serves as the Vice Chair for Basic Research in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University. At the Winship Cancer Institute, he holds multiple leadership roles including Associate Director for Basic Research and Shared Resources, Co-Leader of the Translational GI Malignancy Program, and Interim Scientific Director for the ExCITE Cellular and Immunotherapy Core. He is also an MPI of an NCI-funded Cancer Biology T32 Pre-Doctoral Training Program and holds the John Kauffman Family Professorship in Pancreatic Cancer Research.

Dr. Lesinski has published more than 150 manuscripts and maintained sustained extramural funding from the NCI and foundations, while mentoring a diverse group of talented basic and translational trainees pursuing careers across academia, medicine, and industry. His commitment to integrating mechanistic discovery with clinical translation, through collaborative partnerships with physicians, academic scientists, industry, and government partners, defines both his scientific identity and his approach to advancing the field.

Dr. Lesinski has been actively engaged with the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer for more than two decades through committee leadership, educational programming, and mentorship initiatives that support investigators across career stages. This long-standing involvement reflects his belief that durable progress in cancer immunotherapy depends on a connected, collaborative, and well-trained community working together across disciplines and institutions. He is committed to advancing SITC’s role in fostering collaboration, training the next generation of immunotherapy scientists, and accelerating translation of discoveries into effective treatments for patients.

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

Cancer immunotherapy has entered a pivotal time. Approaches once considered experimental are now standard of care for patients, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cellular therapies, antibody-based approaches, oncolytic viruses and other emerging treatments (ADCs, bispecifics etc.). Renewed momentum in cancer vaccines, neoantigen discovery, and microbiome research continue to expand the therapeutic landscape. Importantly, SITC members have championed many of these approaches and the organization has facilitated communicating these key findings into the larger community. Despite this progress, several critical challenges must be addressed to sustain meaningful advances for patients.

First, we must better understand and overcome therapeutic resistance in the modern treatment era. Most patients enrolling in immunotherapy trials today have already received checkpoint blockade and multiple prior therapies, creating a biologically distinct and often immune compromised population that traditional preclinical studies fail to capture. Patients also develop metastases that render them to have even lower likelihood of responding to immunotherapy. These challenges emphasize the importance of using more relevant pre-clinical models that better approximate the realities of patients entering clinical trials. Another opportunity lies in developing a more comprehensive understanding of how conventional therapeutic approaches—including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and targeted therapy for patients with defined genomic alterations— may impact the host immune response. These ambitious and critical lines of work could uncover unique therapeutic vulnerabilities that can be leveraged in the setting of immunotherapy resistant disease.

At this time the field is amassing large volumes of patient-derived data that can inform how therapeutic resistance evolves and can be subverted. I am confident that advances in spatial biology, single-cell profiling, and artificial intelligence offer powerful new tools to interrogate the tumor microenvironment and define immune signatures that might predict response, resistance, and toxicity. SITC is well positioned to support dissemination of these fundamental basic and translational science studies that offer insight into new resistance targets. As a focused society, SITC can also foster relationships with other organizations to coordinate advocacy around how immunotherapy clinical trials are prioritized. Further, studies evaluating window-of-opportunity and neoadjuvant approaches could provide compelling justification to move effective immunotherapies earlier in the course of care, a strategic shift that would meaningfully advance the field. Moving clinical medicine forward will require coordinated efforts across academia, industry, and regulatory agencies. SITC is well positioned to lead this effort through pragmatic guideline development, educational initiatives, and by fostering the collaborative infrastructure needed to move science from discovery to clinical implementation.

Second, how can we optimally engineer immune cells to eradicate cancer? Adoptive cell and gene therapy is advancing rapidly, but its impact remains limited by manufacturing complexity and costs, which restricts access for financially vulnerable patients and prevents widespread global dissemination. These issues deserve ongoing attention, discussion and solutions. The optimal antigen targets for each patient’s tumor type are often elusive and cell engineering strategies are constantly evolving, yet data emerging across T cell, NK cell, and other immune cell platforms continue to fuel optimism. Emerging approaches such as in vivo engineering and off-the-shelf cellular platforms are generating compelling data but require coordinated evaluation, rigorous dissemination, and thoughtful clinical translation. SITC is uniquely positioned to convene academia, industry, and patient advocates to accelerate progress and ensure these therapies reach patients broadly. I look forward to contributing to these conversations and advances through partnerships. I believe the future of cell therapy is particularly bright, with major advances within reach over the next decade.

Together, addressing therapeutic resistance, advancing next-generation cell engineering strategies, and translating science into clinical practice will define the next decade of progress in cancer immunotherapy.

What is Your Vision for SITC?

I am a strong advocate for SITC in the larger scientific community, and particularly in facilitating the growth of trainees. I am eager to ensure the organization retains its position as an authority for cancer immunotherapy and maintains its reputation as a collaborative hub that connects all stakeholders to conduct innovative research that ultimately benefits patients.

I believe that the true value of SITC is realized through the collective accomplishments of its members. During my own career, I witnessed SITC serve as an integral voice to the community as immunotherapy continues to evolve into the standard of care for patients across solid and hematologic malignancies. My vision is that SITC will continue to bring investigators together and provide unique opportunities for its diverse membership, united by a common passion for cancer immunotherapy. The potential benefits of a truly collaborative community are tremendous, retaining what is are already done well, while continually adapting based on member feedback, stakeholder needs, and rapidly evolving integration of immunotherapy with emerging disciplines, such as artificial Intelligence, in vivo engineering, and spatial technologies.

It is critical that SITC maintain an educational and forward-thinking forum where members can regularly network, stay current on cutting-edge science, present their original research, and build a generational scientific community: One that a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow first enters, and remains part of throughout their career. Aligned with my own experience, SITC can be a stable force for all career stages, offering meaningful involvement through committees, workshops, guided development, and dissemination of key findings into the larger scientific community. Programs such as the Women in Immunotherapy Network (WIN) forum, Sparkathon, and fellowship opportunities should absolutely continue and expand. There are also other opportunities to enhance collaboration between academics, industry, government, and foundation members by promoting the unique strengths each brings to the field. I hope to play a role in enriching these possibilities as part of the organization. Finally, SITC should continue to harness its identity as a truly international organization by expanding online offerings, interactive forums, and partnerships with other societies to broaden its global reach and open new opportunities for collaboration and impact worldwide.

My vision for SITC is deeply personal. I became involved in the organization in 2004 as a postdoctoral fellow and have essentially grown up alongside it. Over the last two decades, I have attended the vast majority of annual meetings, presenting original research, served as a SITC Champion, contributed as an Awards Committee member, a Membership Committee member, and later the Chair of the Membership Committee, during a period of tremendous organizational growth. I have also organized and presented at the SITC Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy™ series and Winter School on multiple occasions. This experience has shaped my own appreciation for what SITC offers its members and my commitment to helping the organization continue to grow as an inclusive, forward-looking community that advances cancer immunotherapy worldwide.

Amanda W. Lund, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology and Department of Pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a Member of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health. She received her PhD in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and completed postdoctoral training in cancer immunology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. At NYUGSOM, Dr. Lund served as the Director of Curriculum for the Vilcek PhD in Biomedical Sciences and co-director of the Translational Immunology Center. In recognition of the impact of her work, Dr. Lund has received multiple awards. She was the recipient of the AACR NextGen Star Award, the Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J. Old STAR Award, the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Emerging Leader Award, and the AACR-BMS Midcareer Female Investigator Award. She has been an active SITC member since 2014, serving as a member of the SITC Immune Biomarkers Task Force, participating in SITC mentoring initiatives, and has served as a faculty mentor for the SITC Sparkathon Accelerator Program.

Dr. Lund’s research defines how lymphatic–immune interactions shape anti-tumor immunity in melanoma, and her work has established the lymphatic vasculature as an active, context-dependent regulator of adaptive immune responses. Her recent studies demonstrate that T cell exit out of tumors governs the anatomical distribution and functional potential of the anti-tumor T cell repertoire and reveal tumor-associated lymphatic vessels as programmable targets that shift the balance from metastasis toward immune surveillance. This integration of tumor immunology and host physiology aims to generate a better understanding for how host adaptations to tumor progression influence mechanisms of response to therapy over time.

What are the two or three critical issues facing the field of cancer immunotherapy?

Cancer immunotherapy stands at an inflection point: transformative clinical successes have revealed what is possible, but also exposed persistent gaps in our mechanistic understanding of how, why, and for whom these therapies work. While next generation therapies have consistently emerged from deep biological insight, there is increasing pressure toward translational immediacy that can disincentivize foundational discovery. Without sustained investment in fundamental immunology, we risk limiting progress to incremental advances rather than enabling breakthrough therapies. At the same time, the rapid expansion of high-dimensional data and artificial intelligence is reshaping how we approach discovery. These tools offer unprecedented opportunities to identify patterns across complex systems, yet their application often outpaces the biological frameworks needed to interpret them. Finally, a central challenge in cancer immunotherapy is that we continue to treat a dynamic system with static frameworks. Patient responses are shaped by continuous interactions between tumor, immune system, tissue context, and the therapy itself. Building on the strengths of the field and meeting these new challenges will be essential to extend the reach and durability of immunotherapy across patient populations.

What is Your Vision for SITC?

My vision for SITC is threefold: that we continue to foster and support rigorous basic tumor immunology as the fundamental basis for breakthroughs in patient care; that we facilitate the training of the next generation of cancer immunologists who embrace the powers of artificial intelligence to augment rigorous, reductionist biology; and that this together will fuel an era of true systems immunology, where discrete mechanisms can be connected over space and time to generate a dynamic view of the patient that guides adaptive and personalized therapies.

Basic Science. We need to bring the best immunologists and cancer biologists into the field of cancer immunology and ensure that they are supported in asking fundamental, mechanistic questions. SITC is uniquely positioned to reinforce the value of basic science by elevating mechanistic work at its meetings and creating funding oportunities that reward discovery at its earliest stages. By serving as a nexus between discovery and application, SITC can ensure that the next generation of therapies is grounded in a precise understanding of immune regulation in cancer, rather than empirical iteration alone.

Training and Artificial Intelligence. SITC programs like the Sparkathon Accelerator Program have had a significant impact on launching the next leaders in our field, and the organization should continue to play a central role in shaping future generations of cancer immunologists. This includes not only fostering scientific excellence, and facilitating the transition to independence, but also equipping trainees with the conceptual and technical fluency to navigate an increasingly data-rich landscape. I would support the expansion of educational initiatives, workshops, fellowships, and collaborative platforms, that train scientists to critically apply artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. SITC can lead in defining best practices and ensuring that technological advancement strengthens, rather than dilutes, mechanistic rigor.

Treating the System. We continue to struggle to fully ground therapeutic strategies in the biology of the individual patient. SITC can lead a conceptual shift toward treating the immune-tumor ecosystem as an integrated, adaptive network. This will require bridging spatial and temporal scales and fostering collaborations across disciplines, including cancer biology, immunology, engineering, and computational science guided by the leading clinical perspectives. By promoting collaborative research frameworks and clinical strategies that account for this complexity, SITC can help drive the development of personalized therapeutic strategies that anticipate and direct the evolving state of the patient.