Career Enhancement Program
The goal of the Career Enhancement Program is to provide training and guidance from academic physician-scientists, clinical investigators and laboratory-based scientists to individuals who wish to dedicate their efforts to improving the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumors through translational research. The program supports advanced postdoctoral and clinical fellows, junior faculty or established investigators who wish to develop or refocus their careers on translational research in brain cancer. Applications are accepted each summer.
2023 Awardees
Chibawanye I. Ene, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery — 2nd year renewal
"Relevance of Crosstalk between Glioblastoma Cells and Surrounding Nonneoplastic Cells During Tumor Infiltration"
Margie Sutton, Ph.D., Instructor, Cancer Systems Imaging — 2nd year renewal
"Exploring Statin-Mediated Changes of B7-H3 Dimerization in Glioblastoma"
2022 Awardees
Chibawanye I. Ene, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery
"Relevance of Crosstalk between Glioblastoma Cells and Surrounding Nonneoplastic Cells During Tumor Infiltration"
Margie Sutton, Ph.D., Instructor, Cancer Systems Imaging
"Exploring Statin-Mediated Changes of B7-H3 Dimerization in Glioblastoma"
2021 Awardees
Nazanin Majd, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Neuro-Oncology
"Targeting the MAPK Pathway for Treatment of CIC Mutant Oligodendroglioma"
Pratibha Sharma, Ph.D., Instructor, Neuro-Oncology
"Targeting Metabolic Vulnerabilities of Glioma for Radio-sensitization"
2020 Awardees
Rafet Basar, M.D., Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy
"Off-the-shelf Genetically Engineered Natural Killer Therapy for Glioblastoma"
2019 Awardees
Cristian Rodriguez-Aguayo, Ph.D., Instructor, Experimental Therapeutics
"Targeted Therapy of Pediatric Brain Tumor"
Kadir Akdemir, Ph.D., Instructor, Genomic Medicine
"Targeting Complex Rearrangements in Glioblastoma Genomes to Develop Predictive and Prognostic Biomarkers"
2018 Awardees
Yiwen Chen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
“Systematic identification of functional long noncoding RNAs in the regulation of glioblastoma stem cell and gliomagenesis”
Peter Kan, M.D., Associate Professor, Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine
“Preliminary Study of Super-selective Intra-arterial Infusion of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell-based Therapy in a Rabbit Human Glioblastoma Model”
2017 Awardees
Jiha Kim, Ph.D., Instructor, Cancer Biology
“Breaching Blood-Brain-Barrier Using Exosome Mediated Molecular Targeting”
Siyuan Zheng, Ph.D., Instructor, Genomic Medicine
“Characterization of Whole Genome Doubling in Adult Diffuse Glioma”
2016 Awardees
Krishna Bhat, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Translational Molecular Pathology
“Disrupting the Collagen Architecture to Inhibit TAZ/YAP Signaling in Glioblastoma”
Kunal Rai, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Genomic Medicine
“Contribution of Epigenome to Glioblastoma Multiforme”