*UPCOMING THESIS DEFENSE*
Student: Ersilia Barin
Thesis Advisor: Heeseon An
Date of Thesis Defense: 6/13/2025
TITLE: "Rapid Degradation of Ribosomal Proteins Determines the Role of R-proteins After Ribosome Biogenesis"
*UPCOMING THESIS DEFENSE*
Student: Hui-Hsuan (Helen) Kuo
Thesis Advisor: Olivier Elemento
Date of Thesis Defense: 6/26/2025
TITLE: "Patient-Derived Organoids as Translational Tools for Cancer Therapy and Tumor Microenvironment Studies"
*UPCOMING THESIS DEFENSE*
Student: Payal Patel
Thesis Advisor: Sarat Chandarlapaty
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/29/2025
TITLE: "Characterizing the Role of MAPK Pathway Alterations in ER+ Breast Cancer"
Student: Justin Hachey
Thesis Advisor: Jason Lewis
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/8/2025
TITLE: "A Theranostic Approach Against Triple Negative Breast Cancer:Targeting the Extracellular Matrix for ImmunoPET and Radioimmunotherapy"
Student: Domenic Gargiulo
Thesis Advisor: Dawid Nowak
Date of Thesis Defense: 3/24/2025
TITLE: "Metabolic Adaptations in the Progression of Prostate Cancer to Metastasis"
Student: Ahmed Mahmoud
Thesis Advisor: Karuna Ganesh
Date of Thesis Defense: 3/10/2025
TITLE: "Patient-Derived Models Identify Mechanisms and Druggable Vulnerabilities of Peritoneal Carcinomatosis"
Student: Chiara Mancinelli
Thesis Advisor: David Eliezer
Date of Thesis Defense: 3/7/2025
TITLE: "The Role of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Neuronal Membrane and Protein Interactions in Disease Pathology"
Student: Ifé Akano
Thesis Advisor: Yael David
Date of Thesis Defense: 3/5/2025
TITLE: "Chromatin Regulation Beyond DNA Repair: Epigenetic Functions of SMARCA3, SHPRH, and EV-DNA in Cancer"
Student: Albert Agustinus
Thesis Advisors: Samuel Bakhoum/Yael David
Date of Thesis Defense: 12/05/2024
TITLE: "Epigenetic Consequences of Chromosomal Instability in Cancer"
Student: Chiara Evans
Thesis Advisor: Michael Kharas
Date of Thesis Defense: 10/29/2024
TITLE: "Arginine Methylation of the RNA-binding Protein MUSASHI2 Regulates Normal and Malignant Blood Fate"
Student: Lia Zallar
Thesis Advisor: Kristen Pleil
Date of Thesis Defense: 9/17/2024
TITLE: "The Reciprocal Relationship Between Estrogen, Alcohol, and the P450 Enzyme Aromatase"
Student: Daniel Worroll
Thesis Advisor: Yueming Li
Date of Thesis Defense: 9/5/2024
TITLE: "4-Aminoquinoline Inhibitors of the Autophagy-Lysosomal Pathway (ALP) as a Therapeutic Approach For Pancreatic Cancer"
Student: Avelyn De los Reyes
Thesis Advisor: Derek Tan
Date of Thesis Defense: 8/15/2024
TITLE: "Development of Carboxylic Acid Replacements as Chemical Probes and Bioisosteres"
Student: Nathaniel Tse
Thesis Advisor: Francis Lee
Date of Thesis Defense: 8/1/2024
TITLE: "Preadolescent stress impairs social interaction and alters social circuit activity in the mOFC-BLA projection"
Student: Wendy Lin
Thesis Advisor: Joao Xavier
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/25/2024
TITLE: "Fusobacterium nucleatum secretomes rewire the transcriptome and metabolome of colorectal cancer cells to evade NK cell killing"
Student: Caroline Broderick
Thesis Advisor: Scott Lowe
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/16/2024
TITLE: "Harnessing the Immune Modulatory Properties of the Senescence Program to Treat Cancer"
Student: Chieh (Jeff) Hsiao
Thesis Advisor: Daniel Bachovchin
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/11/2024
TITLE: "The Regulation of the NLRP1 and CARD8 Inflammasomes"
Student: Svena Verma
Thesis Advisors: Taha Merghoub/Jedd Wolchok
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/11/2024
TITLE: "Targeting Tumor Glycolysis Redirects Intratumoral Glucose Uptake and Improves Anti-Tumor Immunity"
Student: Jacob J. Ferreira
Thesis Advisors: Jochen Buck and Lonny Levin
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/11/2024
TITLE: "Regulation of the Full-Length Soluble Adenylyl Cyclase Isoform"
Student: Elizabeth Isaac
Thesis Advisor: Jan Grimm, MD, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 5/24/2024
TITLE: "Harnessing the Therapeutic Potential of Iron and Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in the Treatment of Solid Tumors"
Student: Winson Cai
Thesis Advisor: David Scheinberg, MD, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 5/13/2024
TITLE: "Augmenting CAR T Cell Functions with LIGHT"
Student: Pamela S. Hatfield (Herrera)
Thesis Advisor: Marcel van den Brink, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 5/7/2024
TITLE: "Microbiota-Derived Indoxyl Sulfate Enhances CAR T Cell Cytotoxicity in a Lymphoma Tumor Model"
Student: Brandon Ng
Thesis Advisor: Marcel Van den Brink, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/26/2024
TITLE: "Engineered Il-18 Secretion and Multi-Antigen Targeting Enable CAR T cells to Eliminate Multiple Myeloma with Low Antigen Expression in an Immunocompetent Mouse Model"
Student: Jessica Falci
Thesis Advisor: Yueming Li, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/25/2024
TITLE: "Development and Mechanism of Autophagy Modulators for Treatment of Neurodegenerative Disorders"
Student: Yang Bai
Thesis Advisor: Vivek Mittal, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/3/2024
TITLE: "Epigenetic Regulation of Chromosomal Instability in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer"
Student: Mildred Unti
Thesis Advisor: Samie Jaffrey, MD, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 3/25/2024
TITLE: "A Method for Expressing Circular mRNA in Mammalian Cells and its Use as A Therapeutic and Research Tool"
Student: Keifer Kurtz
Thesis Advisor: David Scheinberg, MD, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 1/17/2024
TITLE: "Orthogonal Approaches for Enhancing Cellular Immunotherapies"
Student: Leona Nease
Thesis Advisor: Elena Piskounova, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 12/6/2023
TITLE: "Selenocysteine tRNA Methylation as an Antioxidant Mechanism in Melanoma Metastasis"
Student: Kyeara Mack
Thesis Advisor: Jason Lewis, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 11/13/2023
TITLE: "Antibody-Based Theranostics in Ovarian Cancer: Targeting MUC16 for Diagnosis and Radioimmunotherapy"
Student: Melissa Boby
Thesis Advisor: Derek Tan, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 11/8/2023
TITLE: "Development of Adenylation Enzyme Inhibitors as Novel Antibiotics"
Student: Krysta DiKun
Thesis Advisor: Lorraine Gudas, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 9/18/2023
TITLE: "Investigating the Roles of Retinoic Acid Receptor (RAR) Alphaand Beta in Kidney Cell Types"
Student: Kyle Planck
Thesis Advisor: Kyu Rhee, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 8/17/2023
TITLE: "Harnessing Chemical Biology and Metabolomics for Preclinical TB Drug Discovery"
Student: Lauren Dong
Thesis Advisor: Taha Merghoub, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 8/9/2023
TITLE: "Intermittent MEK Inhibition with GITR Co-Stimulation Rescues T Cell Function and Sensitizes Solid Tumors to CTLA-4 Blockade"
Student: Broderick Corless
Thesis Advisor: Derek Tan, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 8/2/2023
TITLE: "EpoxySEAKER: CAR T-Cell Model for Targeted Local Biosynthesis of Therapeutic Warheads"
Student: Jonathan Khan
Thesis Advisor: Jedd Wolchok, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/6/2023
TITLE: "Rational Development of an Optimized CAR T Cell Platform for Therapy of Glioblastoma"
Student: Pedro Silberman
Thesis Advisor: David Scheinberg, MDPhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 7/5/2023
TITLE: "Tumor Microenvironment Actuated T-Cells (MEAT-Cells) to Conditionally Express Chimeric Antigen Receptors and Mitigate Lethal Toxicity"
Student: Jiayi "Cassie" Yuan
Thesis Advisor: Lorenz Studer, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 6/29/2023
TITLE: "Genome-Wide Loss-of-Function Screens in Human Microglia to Identify Novel HSV1 Susceptibility Factor"
Student: Lauren Jonas
Thesis Advisor: Yueming Li, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/6/2023
TITLE: "Interferon Inducible Transmembrane Protein 3 in Alzheimer’s Disease and Tauopathy"
Student: Daniel Tylawsky
Thesis Advisor: Daniel Heller, PhD
Date of Thesis Defense: 4/5/2023
TITLE: "Drug Delivery to Intracranial Tumors by Active Transport of Targeted Nanocarriers"
