This year 12 students participated in summer internships at MSK through the U54 CCNY-MSKCC Partnership. Seven students were undergraduates from CCNY and five were high school students from New York City Department of Education public high schools.
Genefer Duran of CCNY worked with mentor Smita Banerjee, PhD on the project: Patient-Clinician Empathic Communication in Lung Cancer. CCNY student Sumaiya Islam was mentored by Francesca Gany, MD, MS and Jennifer Leng, MD, MPH on the project: Colorectal Cancer Screening Uptake in A High Risk Cohort of New York City Taxi Drivers. Both students were part of the PURT Community Outreach and Behavioral Science Research track.
Syed Abbas Rizvi worked with mentors Michelle Bradbury, MD, PhD and Feng Chen, PhD on the project: Pharmacokinetics of Nanoparticle Drug Conjugate and was part of the PURT Nanotechnology Research track.
CCNY student Katerina Jou, was mentored by Kishore Pillarsetty, PhD and Joseph Osborne, MD, PhD on the project: Effect of specific activity on the uptake of [68Ga]-DKFZ-PSMA11 in non-target organs. CCNY student Tarek Munawar completed an internship in bioengineering with mentor Govind Srimathveeravalli, PhD on the project: Mechanisms mediating cell death during treatment with pulsed electric fields. Pranav Parsi, CCNY student worked on the project: The Role of Interferon-g in Gastrointestinal Graft-versus-Host Disease After Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation with mentor Alan Hanash, MD, PhD. CCNY student Shahadat Rahman, worked with mentors Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis, PhD and Nestor Saiz, PhD on the project: Using Direct Laser Cell Ablation to Elucidate Mechanisms of Tissue Size Control in the Early Mammalian Embryo. These four students were part of the Partnership Undergraduate Research Training track.
The high school students: Suprova Samad, Yerim Lee, Victoria Sahadi, Eyad Chafik and Nancy DeGrezia were mentored by Sheila Fortunato, MS; Gabriella Carollo, undergraduate Chief Summer Intern; and undergraduate STEM mentor Julia Radzio. The students worked on individual research projects and all studied MSK-IMPACT™ (Integrated Mutation Profiling of Actionable Cancer Targets), and its clinical significance in personalized medicine.
Drs Hricak and Hubbard met with the students to discuss their experiences at the mid-point of the internships. Near the end of the summer internships, all trainees presented their research during a Department of Radiology student presentation session, where the students voted on their favorite presentation.
For more information, contact Sheila Fortunato at fortunas@mskcc.org
From left Gabriella Carollo, Pranav Parsi, Sheila Fortunato, Tarek Munawar, Julia Radzio, Suprova Samad, Dr Hedvig Hricak, Yerim Lee, Sumaiya Islam, Victoria Sahadi, Dr Karen Hubbard, Genefer Duran, Shahadat Rahman, Katerina Jou, Eyad Chafik, Syed Rizvi; Leo Spychala, and Nadia Norman.
