Join outstanding doctoral students and postdocs from diverse disciplines in UTHealth Houston, who are committed to a career in cancer prevention research and health equity!
We will soon begin conducting informational sessions and accepting applications for the postdoctoral and doctoral fellowship cohort to begin training January 1st 2024!
Our program, sponsored by the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, trains early doctoral and postdoctoral scholars to:
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Applicants should have a project focused on cancer prevention, including any of the following:
- identifying cancer risk factors
- addressing personal and organizational risk factors and exposures
- promoting vaccine protection
- detecting cancer early
- reducing side effects from treatment
- supporting cancer survivors
We recruit from the Schools of Bioinformatics, Public Health (all campuses), Biomedical Sciences, and McGovern Medical School. All fellows take part in an integrative seminar in the spring and fall semesters of the fellowship, take short courses from other schools, lead sessions for the summer undergraduate trainees, and work on joint projects.
Cancer Prevention Fields include:
| Public health informatics | EHR optimization |
| Economic & policy analysis | Intervention design, implementation, & scale-up |
| Epidemiology & genetics | Biomarker discovery |
| Cancer disparities & community engagement | Cancer genomics |
| Data science & novel informatics approaches | Entrepreneurial technology |
| Digital health technologies | Human factors engineering |
About Our Funding Agency
The program is generously funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas grant (RP#210042). The CPRIT program was created in 2007 as part of a voter-approved constitutional amendment authorizing the state to issue $3 billion in bonds to fund groundbreaking cancer research and prevention programs and services in Texas, and it was renewed in 2021.
You can find out more about CPRIT on their website: https://www.cprit.state.tx.us/
Doctoral Fellowships
Seeking applicants committed to a career in cancer prevention research!
Apply using this form: CPRIT predoctoral application (updated 4-11-2023)
Once completed, send to CPRITFellowships@uth.tmc.edu.
Members of underrepresented minority groups are highly encouraged to apply.
Eligibility
- U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and international visa holders
- Enrolled in the UTHealth School Public Health (all campuses), School of Biomedical Informatics, or Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
- Residence in Texas during the fellowship
Program Benefits
- Three years of support, $28,000 stipend (GSBS fellows will be paid at the GSBS level) + student health insurance
- $1,000 travel expenses for presentations at scientific meetings
- Tuition and fees, books, software, and laptop/tablet*
- Training and coaching in innovative thinking Editing and training in compelling oral presentations - Trans-disciplinary research seminars and cross-disciplinary training.
*Additional research expenses should be paid by the mentor.
Doctoral affiliate fellows (with stipend/salary support from employment or other cancer research fellowships) receive the benefits listed above EXCEPT stipend support and student health insurance.
How to apply
To apply, please email your completed application to CPRITFellowships@uth.tmc.edu.
Application checklist for required application materials.
We have compiled a list of frequently asked questions, you can review them in our Applicant FAQ.
Postdoctoral Fellowships
Seeking applicants committed to a career in cancer prevention research!
Apply using this form: CPRIT postdoc application (updated 5-16-2023)
Once completed, send to CPRITFellowships@uth.tmc.edu.
Members of underrepresented minority groups are highly encouraged to apply.
Program Benefits
Full fellowships
- Two years of support, NRSA level stipend, starting at $56,484 + health insurance
- $2,000 travel expenses for presentations at scientific meetings
- Tuition and fees, books, software, and laptop/tablet*
- Training and coaching in innovative thinking
- Editing and training in compelling oral presentations - Trans-disciplinary research seminars and cross-disciplinary training.
* Additional research expenses should be paid by mentor.
Affiliate fellowships available for postdocs with salary/stipend support from employment or other cancer fellowships: All benefits listed above except stipend support and health insurance.
How to apply
To apply, please email your completed application to CPRITFellowships@uth.tmc.edu.
Application checklist for required application materials.
We have compiled a list of frequently asked questions, you can review them in our Applicant FAQ.
Innovative Thinking
Take the Massive Open Online Course on Innovative Thinking by Roberta B. Ness, M.D., M.P.H., who literally wrote the book(s) on innovation.
Click on the photo below to see Dr. Ness's TedXHouston talk, "Innovative thinking: Can you be taught?"
Click on the photo below to see Dr. Ness’s TedMed Talk “Reinventing our scientific future”
Innovation Generation Tools Definitions
Ness, Roberta B. Innovation Generation: How to Produce Creative and Useful Scientific Ideas. Oxford University Press, 2012.
CPRIT Fellowship Current Trainees
SBMI = School of Biomedical Informatics; SPH = School of Public Health; GSBS = Graduate School of Biomedical Informatics
Current Doctoral Fellows by School (Name, Project, & Mentor) |
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SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH |
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Shwetha Kumar, MPH, MDS (“Association between perturbation in cellular metabolism and prognosis in cancer”) |
Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (Rehan Akbani) |
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Ariana Garza, MPH (“Genetics of liver fat in association with metabolic dysfunction in fatty liver disease”) |
Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (Audrey Choh) |
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Shiming Zhang, MS (“Occupational and physical therapy services in pediatric cancer survivors”) |
Biostatistics & Data Sciences (Michael Swartz) |
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SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS |
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Tavleen Singh, MS (“Context-aware content-sensitive modeling of online peer interactions in social media: towards personalized digital experiences for behavior change and health promotion”) |
Center for Digital Health & Analytics (Sahiti Myneni) |
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Sarvesh Soni, MS(“Cancer-specific cohort retrieval and question answering from electronic health records”) |
(Kirk Roberts) |
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GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES |
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Saleh Ramezani, MS ("Constructing a biomimetic colon for targeting tumor heterogeneity for MRI applications") |
Diagnostic & Biomedical Sciences (Mary C. Farach-Carson) |
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Joseph DeCunha, MS (“Full lineal energy spectrum based tumor and normal tissue biological effect models for proton therapy”) |
Radiation Physics (Radhe Mohan) |
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Taylor Halsey, MS (“Role of gut microbiota in immune checkpoint inhibitor-mediated colitis”) |
Genomic Medicine (Robert Jenq) |
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Kevin Liu, MS (Dosimetry and Biological mechanisms of FLASH Radiotherapy) |
Medical Physics (Emil Schüler, PhD) |
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Barbara Marquez, BA (An automated, specialized contour review system for radiotherapy) |
Medical Physics (Laurence E. Court, PhD) |
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GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES/MCGOVERN MEDICAL SCHOOL |
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Mikayla Waters, BS (“Mitochondrial dysfunction: A vulnerability or advantage in MSH2 deficiency-related endometrial cancer development?”) |
Gynecologic Oncology (Melinda Yates) |
Current Postdoctoral Trainees (Name, Project, School, & Mentor) |
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Youmin Cho, PhD, RN (Design and Development of An Electronic Adverse Event Self-Reporting System for Patients with Cancer) |
School of Biomedical Informatics (Yang Gong, MD, PhD) |
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Xiong Le, PhD, MS (Enhance RNAs as cancer diagnosis and prognosis biomarkers) |
McGovern Medical School, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Wenbo Li) |
Doctoral Alumni by School (Name, Project, Mentor, & Current Position) |
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SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH |
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Cong Zhu, PhD, MPH - 2021 (“A machine learning based multi-dimensional framework for studying the risk of radiotherapy-induced lymphopenia and its associated survival among esophageal cancer patients”) Epidemiology, Genetics, & Environmental Sciences (Radhe Mohan, Goo Jun) |
Principal Biostatistician Biogen Cambridge, MA
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Andrew Aschenbrenner, PhD – 2019 (Moving beyond the single gene: Integrative gene set analysis for RNA-seq) Biostatistics & Data Science (Yunxin Fu, David Loose) |
Biostatistician Psychogenics Paramus, NJ |
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Ming Cao, PhD – 2017 (Improved statistical inference for social networks by combining exponential random graph models and latent space models) Biostatistics & Data Science (Kayo Fujimoto, Yonghui Wu) |
Principal Statistician GoBroad Healthcare Group Shanghai, China |
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Zhou Renke, PhD – 2014 (A flexible semiparametric joint model for semi-completing risks data with missing cause of informative terminal event) Biostatistics & Data Science (Jing Ning, Melissa Bondy) |
Principal Biostatistician FMD K&L Fort Washington, PA |
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Ebun O. Ebunlomo, PhD, MPH, MCHES – 2014 (Health promotion, not cancer prevention: Nigerian women and breast health) Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences (Sheryl McCurdy) |
Curriculum Manager of MPH Clinical Assistant Professor' Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences Baylor University Waco, TX |
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SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS |
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Xinyuan Zhang, PhD, MS – 2022 (“How to better combine human knowledge with an automatic computer algorithm to improve the overall accuracy and interpretability for skin disease images classification”) (Cui Tao) |
Associate McKinsey & Co NYC, NY |
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Laila Bekhet, PhD, MSc, MBA – 2021 (“An implementable deep learning based model for predicting clinical events using electronic health records structured data”) (Degui Zhi) |
Assistant Professor UTHealth, School of Biomedical Informatics Houston, TX |
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YuanYuan Liu, PhD, MS – 2020 (Personalized estimation and causal inference via deep learning algorithms) (Momiao Xiong) |
Data Scientist PROS, Science & Research Houston, TX |
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JingCheng Du, PhD – 2019 (VaxInsight: An artificial intelligence system to access large-scale public perceptions on vaccine from social media) (Cui Tao, Hua Xu) |
Director of Natural Language Processing, Melax Tech Adjunct Professor UTHealth, School of Biomedical Informatics Houston, TX |
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Zhigo Yu, PhD, MS – 2017 (Understanding PubMed search results using topic models and interactive information visualization) (George Delclos, Todd Johnson) |
Senior Applied Scientist Relevance Team Microsoft Bellevue, WA |
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Franck Diaz Vasquez Garelli, PhD – 2016 (FAQ DataGauge: A model-driven framework for systematically assessing the quality of clinical data for secondary use) (Todd Johnson, Elmer Bernstam) |
Assistant Professor Dept of Public Health Sciences University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC |
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Sahiti Myneni, PhD, MSE – 2013 (Attributing meaning to online social network analysis for tailored socio-behavioral support systems) (Trevor Cohen, Kayo Fuijimoto) |
Associate Professor and Associate Director for Digital Health and Analytics UTHealth, School of Biomedical Informatics Houston, TX |
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GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES |
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Ruoyu Wang, MS - 2022 (“Mapping 3D epigenome alterations in human Down Syndrome”) Biochemistry & Cell Biology (Wenbo Li) |
Doctoral Student |
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Brittney Jewell, PhD – 2021 (The role of oxidative phosphorylation in a novel model of iPSC-derived osteosarcomagenesis) Biochemistry & Cell Biology (Dung-Fang Lee) |
Postdoctoral Fellow Salk Institute for Biological Studies San Diego, CA |
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Tristen Tellman – 2021 (Perlecan-Semaphorin 3A-Plexin A1-Neuropilin-1 Complex: Flipping the switch controlling metastatic behavior of prostate cancer cells) Diagnostic & Biomedical Sciences (Mary C. Farach-Carson) |
Science Policy Fellow American Association for Cancer Research Dept of Diagnostic & Biomedical Sciences UTHealth, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Houston, TX |
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Vinay Nair, PhD, MS – 2021 (“Identifying the structural basis of KRAS-mediated cell proliferation induced by membrane depolarization”) Diagnostic & Biomedical Sciences (Alemayehu Gorfe, John F. Hancock) |
Postdoctoral Fellow Dept of Biochemistry & Cell Biology Computational Institute for Applied Cancer Science MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX |
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Ruoji Zhou, MD, PhD, MS – 2019 (Modeling cancer using Li-Fraumeni Syndrome patient T-derived induced pluripotent stem cells) Integrative Biology & Pharmacology (Dung-Fang Lee) |
Postdoctoral Fellow Dept of Urology and Pathology Northwestern Memorial Hospital Chicago, IL |
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David Savage, MD, PhD – 2018 (UBE4B levels determine the efficacy of EGFR and STAT5 inhibitors in treatment resistant neuroblastoma) Neuroscience & Cancer Biology (Andrew Bean) |
Resident Physician PGY3 in Internal Medicine and Hematology Fellow Scripps Health Moores Cancer Center University of California San Diego, CA |
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Krit Ritthipichai, PhD, DVM, MS – 2016 (Mechanistic and functional characterization of B and T Lymphocyte Attenuator (BTLA) in CD8 tumor infiltrating lymphocytes) Immunology (Chantale Bernatchez, Roza Nurieva) |
Assistant Professor of Microbiology Dept of Microbiology and Immunology Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine Blacksburg, VA |
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Jessica Hernandez Chacon, PhD – 2014 (Activating the 4-1BB pathway for the expansion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes for adoptive T-cell therapy for metastatic melanoma patients) (Laszlo Radvanyi) |
Assistant Professor Dept of Medical Education Texas Tech University Health Science Center, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine El Paso, TX |
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Sharangdhar Phatak, PhD – 2012 (Advanced protein modeling method: Benchmarking and applications to computer-aided drug discovery) Immunology (George Stancel, Shuzing Zhang) |
Head Lab Platforms Life Biosciences Cambridge, MA |
Postdoctoral Alumni by School (Name, Project, Mentor, & Current Position) |
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SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH |
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Azam Yazdani, PhD – 2015 (Integrating different types of omicdata to identify robust statistical causal structures and causal inferences) Human Genetics Center (Eric Boerwinkle, Devika Subramanian, Hao Xu) |
Research Scientist Dept of Anesthesiology, Perioperative & Pain Medicine Brigham & Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School Boston, MA |
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Katherine Hutcheson, PhD – 2013 (High burden of late effects upon entry into head & neck survivorship care) Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (Jan Lewin, Kay Bartholomew) |
Professor Dept of Head & Neck Surgery Chief for Speech Pathology & Audiology The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX |
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Hung Luu, MD, PhD, MPH – 2013 (The role of toll-like receptors in cervical dysplasia) Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (David Loose, Jennifer Nettleton) |
Assistant Professor Graduate School of Public Health, Dept of Epidemiology University of Pittsburgh Member Cancer Epidemiology & Prevention Program Hillman Cancer Center Pittsburg, PA |
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Jane Richards Montealegre, PhD, MSPH – 2013 (Ethnographic mapping identifies a productive and feasible venue for a community evaluation of self-sample HPV testing with cytology triage among Latina immigrant screening non-attendees in Harris County, Texas) Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (Patricia Dolan Mullen, Michael Scheurer) |
Assistant Professor and Assistant Director Community Outreach & Engagement Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX |
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Heidi Russell, MD, PhD – 2013 (Dose reduction strategies for low-risk rhabdomyosarcoma: Using cost comparisons to help decide between two chemotherapy regimens with similar outcomes) Management, Policy & Community Health (Luisa Franzini) |
Physician Dept of Pediatrics Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers Associate Professor Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX |
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Marcia C. de Oliveira Otto, PhD – 2012 (Identifying novel approaches to dietary assessment methods) Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences (David Loose, Jennifer Nettleton) |
Assistant Professor Dept of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, & Environmental Sciences, UTHealth School of Public Health Houston, TX |
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SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS |
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Hong Kang, PhD – 2019 (Developing a patient safety system for integrated reporting and shared learning) (Yang Gong, Jing Wang) |
Senior Applied Scientist Natural Language Processing Pieces Technologies Dallas, TX |
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Mary McGuire, PhD, MS – 2013 (Cancer and embryogenesis share common pathways at the molecular level) (Robert Brown, Gino Lim) |
Senior Information Technology Project Manager MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX |
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GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES |
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Natalie Sirisaengtaksin, PhD – 2020 (Engineering bacterial products as a cancer therapy delivery system) Biomedical Sciences (Anne-Marie Krachler) |
Program Manager, Academic Affairs MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Houston, TX |
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Zhao Zhang, PhD – 2020 (“Connecting cancer biomarkers to genetic variants in human cancers”) Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Leng Han) |
Assistant Professor (PI) Fudan University Shanghai, China |
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Jing Gong, MD, PhD – 2018 (Characterization of the functional effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in lncRNAs across human cancers) Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Leng Han) |
Professor Biomedical Informatics Huazhong Agricultural University, College of Informatics Wuhan, China |
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Jingjing Jiao, MD, PhD – 2017 (Molecular characteristics of high prevalence of Hepatocellular carcinoma and underlying liver disease in Hispanics) MD Anderson Cancer Center (Laura Beretta) |
Pathology Resident Anatomic and Clinical Pathology Residency Training Program Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, CT |
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Sara Prijic, PhD, DVM – 2017 (Breast cancer metastasis: What does cholesterol have to do with it?) Integrative Biology & Pharmacology (Jeffrey Chang, Wendy Woodward) |
Senior Scientist Alkermes Inc. Waltham, MA |
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Meng Chen, PhD – 2012 (Pathway analysis of bladder cancer genome-wide association study identified novel pathways involved in bladder cancer development) Integrative Biology & Pharmacology (Xifeng Wu, George Delclos) |
Associate Professor and Dept Chair Dept of Clinical Laboratories Peeking Union Medical College, National Cancer Center/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Beijing, China |
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Joo-Hyung Lee, PhD – 2022 (“Tumorigenic function of cancer-type specific eRNA”) McGovern Medical School, Dept of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (Wenbo Li) |
Senior Scientist Genomic Profiling Team at Vesalius Therapeutics Cambridge, MA
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Hidetaka Tanno, PhD – 2020 (One-step high-throughput identification of antibody/TCR sequences) UT Austin School of Engineering (George Georgiou, Gregory Ippolito, Andrew Ellington) |
Project Leader Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science Tokyo, Japan |
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Arzu Ulu, PhD – 2018 (Identification of novel targets in breast cancer metastasis and tumorigenesis) McGovern Medical School, Dept of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology (Jeffrey Frost) |
Assistant Project Scientist University of California Riverside, CA |
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Zhenlong Li, PhD, MS – 2015 (A multiscale computational platform for the rational design of folate-receptor-specific drug nanocarriers) McGovern Medical School (Alamayehu Gorfe, David Gorenstein, David Loose) |
VP Data Scientist Lead JPMorgan Chase & Co. Florida |
Contact us
For more information regarding the fellowship, please email CPRITFellowships@uth.tmc.edu, or call 713.500.9658. Patricia Dolan Mullen, Co-Director.
Program Director
Maria E. Fernández, PhD
Lorne Bain Distinguished Professor in Public Health and Medicine
Director, Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research
Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences, School of Public Health
Director, Texas Prevention Research Center
Program Co-Directors
Patricia Dolan Mullen, DrPH, MLS
The University of Texas System Distinguished Teaching Professor
President’s Scholar
Minnie Stevens Piper Professor
Cui Tao, PhD
Professor of Bioinformatics
Director of the UTHealth Center for Biomedical Semantics and Data Intelligence
The Dr. Doris L. Ross Professorship
Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) recipient
Natalie Sirisaengtaksin, PhD
Program Manager, Academic Affairs
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Executive Committee
| Alanna Morrison, PhD - Prof & Chair, Dept of Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sci; Director, Ctr for Human Genetics (SPH) | Hua Xu, PhD - Robert H. Graham Prof in Entrepreneurial Biomedical Informatics & Bioengineering; Director, Ctr for Computational Biomedicine; CPRIT Scholar (SBMI) |
| Belinda Reininger, DrPH - Prof, Dept of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sci; Dean, Brownsville Campus (SPH) | Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD - Prof & Director, Ctr for Secure Artificial intelligence for Healthcare; CPRIT Rising Star (SBMI) |
| George Delclos, MD, PhD - Prof, Dept of Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sci; Director, Employee Health Clinic (SPH) | Zhiqiang An, PhD - Prof, Molecular Medicine; Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry; Director, Texas Therapeutic Institute (Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine), McGovern Med School (GSBS) |
| Elmer Bernstam, MD, MSE - Prof of Biomedical Informatics & Internal Medicine (McGovern Med School) & GSBS; SBMI Assoc Dean for Research; Director, CCTS Biomedical Informatics Group | Michael Blackburn, PhD - Exec VP & Chief Academic Officer, UTHealth; GSBS Dean & John P. McGovern Distinguished Prof of Biomedical Sci; Prof & William S. Kilroy, Sr. Distinguished University Chair in Pulmonary Disease , McGovern Med School |
| Shine Chang, PhD - UT System Distinguished Teaching Prof & Ashbel Smith Prof, Dept of Epidemiology; Director, Cancer Prevention Research Training Prog (UT MDA Cancer Ctr) | Melissa Aldrich, PhD – Asst Prof, Ctr for Molecular Imaging, McGovern Med School |
Cancer Prevention Innovation Scholars
Daniel Harrington, PhD (GSBS)
Sahiti Myneni, PhD, MSE (SBMI)
Ross Shegog, PhD (SPH)
Lead Coordinators
Melissa Valerio, PhD, MPH (SPH)
Susan Fenton, PhD (SBMI)
Raquel Y. Salinas, PhD (GSBS)
Angela Ross, DNP, MPH (SBMI)