New faculty join CCR each year to contribute to our work of making breakthrough scientific discoveries to find cures and treatments for cancer.
Sridhar Hannenhalli, Ph.D.
Sridhar Hannenhalli, Ph.D., has joined the Cancer Data Science Laboratory as a Senior Investigator. His lab harnesses a variety of high-throughput omics data to address fundamental biological questions as they pertain to both normal organismal functions and diseases with a special emphasis on cancer.
Peng Jiang, Ph.D.
Peng Jiang, Ph.D., has joined the Cancer Data Science Laboratory as its first Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator. His research focuses on developing integrative frameworks that leverage big-data resources in public domains to identify regulators of cancer therapy resistance.
Mary Kearney, Ph.D.
Mary Kearney, Ph.D., has been appointed as a Senior Scientist in the Host-Virus Interaction Branch of the HIV Dynamics Replication Program. She conducts research on the emergence of HIV drug resistance, the persistence of HIV during antiretroviral treatment (ART) and the sources of rebound viremia after stopping ART.
Laurie Krug, Ph.D.
Laurie Krug, Ph.D., has joined the HIV and AIDS Malignancies Branch as a Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator. She applies novel molecular approaches to define the gammaherpesvirus proteins and host signaling networks that are required for different stages of chronic infection.
Ashish Lal, Ph.D.
Ashish Lal, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Genetics Branch. Dr. Lal is an expert on noncoding RNAs and cancer. He has extensively studied miRNAs in the p53 pathway and in the regulation of differentiation in colorectal cancer.
Daniel Larson, Ph.D.
Daniel Larson, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression. Dr. Larson’s research focuses on understanding gene expression in eukaryotic cells, starting from the mechanistic behavior of individual macromolecules and proceeding to their regulation in cells and tissue.
Vanja Lazarevic, Ph.D.
Vanja Lazarevic, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Experimental Immunology Branch. She researches how transcription factors regulate differentiation and effector function of CD4+ T helper cells in the context of autoimmune disorders with an emphasis on experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a model for multiple sclerosis.
Amy LeBlanc, D.V.M.
Amy LeBlanc, D.V.M., has been appointed as a Senior Scientist in the Molecular Imaging Program. As Director of the Comparative Oncology Program, Dr. LeBlanc has a strong interest in animal modeling for development of new cancer drugs and imaging agents and identification of imaging biomarkers, development and optimization of PET imaging hardware and imaging protocols.
Ji Luo, Ph.D.
Luo, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Genetics. His laboratory investigates how mutant KRAS promotes tumor initiation, maintenance and metastasis.
Jordan Meier, Ph.D.
Jordan Meier, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Chemical Biology Laboratory. Dr. Meier’s research focuses on the development of chemical approaches to study epigenetic signaling and its relationship to cellular metabolism.
Meera Murgai, Ph.D.
Meera Murgai, Ph.D., has joined the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Genetics as a Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Murgai was a postdoctoral fellow in the Pediatric Oncology Branch. Her research centers on perivascular cell plasticity and heterogeneity in the metastatic microenvironment.
Naris Nilubol, M.D.
Naris Nilubol, M.D., has been appointed as a Physician-Scientist Early Investigator in the Surgical Oncology Program. His research focuses on identifying and utilizing the unique and specific dysregulated molecular pathways and altered multi-omics in endocrine tumors as targets for novel therapeutics and markers to predict treatment response.
Shalini Oberdoerffer, Ph.D.
Shalini Oberdoerffer, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression. Her lab broadly examines how DNA and RNA epigenetics dynamically regulate gene expression.
Ramya Ramaswami, M.B.B.S., M.P.H.
Ramya Ramaswami, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., has been appointed as a Physician-Scientist Early Investigator in the HIV and AIDS Malignancy Branch. She focuses on Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus-associated diseases and other HIV-associated cancers, and her clinical studies will use immunotherapy and other targeted therapies for these rare conditions.
Nitin Roper, M.D.
Nitin Roper, M.D., has been appointed as a Physician-Scientist Early Investigator in the Developmental Therapeutics Branch. His research focuses on high-grade neuroendocrine tumors, including small cell lung, bladder, prostate, pancreatic and non-small cell cancers that transform to high-grade neuroendocrine cancers.
S. Cenk Sahinalp, Ph.D.
S. Cenk Sahinalp, Ph.D., has joined the Cancer Data Science Laboratory as a Senior Investigator. His research focuses on developing algorithmic methods for managing, storing, communicating and analyzing high-throughput sequencing data, especially in the context of cancer.
John ‘Jay’ Schneekloth, Ph.D.
John ‘Jay’ Schneekloth, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the Chemical Biology Laboratory. He focuses on identifying and studying small molecules that interact with structured RNA and DNA.
Nirali Shah, M.D., M.H.Sc.
Nirali Shah, M.D., M.H.Sc., has been appointed as an NIH Lasker Scholar Tenure Track Investigator in the Pediatric Oncology Branch. Her primary research interests focus on translation of immuno-therapeutic approaches to treat high-risk hematologic malignancies in children, adolescents and young adults.
Shy Shorer, M.D.
Shy Shorer, M.D., has been appointed as a Senior Clinician in the Office of Sponsor and Regulatory Oversight. His office will oversee safety, clinical monitoring and quality management; provide analytic support; lead the pharmacovigilance program; and maintain high-level expertise regarding FDA regulations.
David Takeda, M.D., Ph.D.
David Takeda, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed as an NIH Lasker Scholar Tenure Track Investigator in the Laboratory of Genitourinary Cancer Pathogenesis. His research seeks to understand the role of epigenetic reprogramming in disease progression by combining genomic and epigenomic profiling of patient samples with functional studies in model systems.
Masaki Terabe, Ph.D.
Masaki Terabe, Ph.D., has been appointed as a Tenure Track Investigator in the Neuro-Oncology Branch. He is working to elucidate the mechanisms of immune regulation of tumor immunity, in particular the roles of regulatory cells including natural killer T cells, regulatory T cells and myeloid-lineage cells.
Eugene Valkov, Ph.D.
Eugene Valkov, Ph.D., has joined the RNA Biology Laboratory as its first Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator. His research focuses on the study of molecular mechanisms of regulation and degradation of messenger RNA.
Changqing Xie, M.D., Ph.D.
Changqing Xie, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed as a Physician-Scientist Early Investigator in the Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch. His research focuses on exploring the potential mechanism of resistance to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors in gastrointestinal malignancies and dissecting the role of cancer stem cells in cholangiocarcinomatherapy resistance.
Euna Yoo, Ph.D.
Euna Yoo, Ph.D., has joined the Chemical Biology Laboratory as a Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator. She is developing new strategies to study and manipulate the human immune system.
Martha Zeiger, M.D.
Martha Zeiger, M.D., has joined the Surgical Oncology Program. She is an internationally renowned endocrine surgeon and scientist who has been a leader in developing molecular diagnostics for thyroid cancer.
Chen Zhao, M.D.
Chen Zhao, M.D., has been appointed as a Physician-Scientist Early Investigator in the Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch. His research focuses on tumor immunology and immunotherapy in lung cancer and thymic malignancies.
Joseph Ziegelbauer, Ph.D.
Joseph Ziegelbauer, Ph.D., has been awarded tenure at NIH and appointed to Senior Investigator in the HIV and AIDS Malignancies Branch. He was the first to report using pulse labeling of proteins coupled with tandem mass spectrometry to discover human targets of herpesvirus microRNAs.