NCI Division of Cancer Biology Junior Investigators Meeting (Speaker Bios)

Parag is the Vice President of Strategic Pharma and Biotech for Data and AI Products at Tempus, AI. He is a scientific leader with expertise in bridging business strategy and technological innovation in the Life Sciences and Healthcare sectors. His specialization focuses on leveraging real-world data (RWD) to generate robust real-world evidence (RWE) that informs translational research, clinical trial design, clinical decision-making, and product commercialization among other areas.

Prior to joining Tempus, Parag's experience in healthcare data analytics and product strategy stems from his work at Sema4, Aetion, and nference, while also supporting several start-up RWD companies with their product development and go-to-market strategies. Parag has also previously worked at PCORI, Deloitte, and the FDA.

Parag earned his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Michigan and his BS in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University, while completing his postdoctoral training at the Nanotechnology Characterization Lab at NCI.

Isha Bhorkar is a PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she studies the mechanobiology of the fallopian tube epithelium. Her research combines patient-derived cell models, microfluidics, and image-based modeling to better understand the biology of the fallopian tube and its relevance to high-grade serous ovarian cancer. She previously earned a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India. She is passionate about advancing research in women’s health and developing innovative approaches to address unmet needs in the field.

Stephan Daetwyler is an Instructor in the lab of Reto Fiolka at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA. His research program seeks to uncover how dynamic, transient immune–cancer cell interactions shape immune-cell decision-making and ultimately determine tumor fate. Central to this effort is the development of smart, integrated imaging platforms and computational tools to quantitatively analyze and perturb the molecular and biophysical mechanisms driving these interactions in vivo.

Stephan studied Interdisciplinary Sciences at ETH Zürich, with a major in physics and biology. For his doctoral thesis, he joined the lab of Dr. Jan Huisken, a pioneer of light-sheet microscopy, at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, where he imaged and quantified vascular development with multidimensional light-sheet microscopy. Supported by an Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation, he then joined the labs of Dr. Reto Fiolka and Dr. Gaudenz Danuser to develop self-driving, smart microscopy technologies to study development, cancer metastasis, and regeneration across spatial and temporal scales.

Dr. Jonathan Franca-Koh is a Team Leader and Program Director at the National Cancer Institute's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Development Center. Jonathan manages SBIR & STTR grants and contracts with a focus on cancer therapeutics and novel tools for research and drug discovery. He provides oversight throughout the award period and mentors small business applicants and awardees in developing their technology goals and commercialization strategy. Prior to joining the SBIR Development Center, Jonathan was a Program Director at the NCI Division of Cancer Biology and Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives. Jonathan received his PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of London’s Institute of Cancer Research in 2003 and completed post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins University and the J. Craig Venter Institute. In 2014, he completed his MBA from Johns Hopkins University, focusing on finance and health care innovation.

I am an Associate Professor (Research) of Pathology, Medicine (Computational Medicine, and Biomedical Data Science) at Stanford. My lab works in computational systems biology, primarily in cancer and more recently in neurodegenerative disease, developing and applying methods that integrate high-throughput genomic and proteomic data with clinical phenotypes and outcomes. A key interest is how the cellular composition and spatial organization of tissues shapes their behavior in disease, and how that might be targeted therapeutically or diagnostically. We co-developed EcoTyper, an algorithm that identifies tumor-relevant cell ecosystems from gene expression data and has yielded insights into the biology of many cancers and into patient response to immunotherapy, and RECOG, a widely used compendium linking gene expression to survival outcomes across adult, pediatric, and immunotherapy-treated cohorts. I came to cancer research from an original background in theoretical particle physics.

Zixian is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he works in Professor Vivek Shenoy’s group. His research integrates theoretical and experimental biophysics to investigate how molecular interactions and physical forces give rise to cellular organization and dynamics at mesoscopic scales. His work focuses on mechanotransduction across multiple levels of cellular organization, including the collective organization of mechanosensitive membrane proteins and the mesoscale organization of chromatin. He combines biophysical theory, computational modeling, and simulation with experimental approaches including super-resolution fluorescence imaging and next-generation sequencing. Through this integrated approach, he aims to uncover physical principles linking cellular mechanics, spatial organization, and gene regulation, with applications to cancer biology and the tumor microenvironment.

Md Kabir, is a Scientist-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Valenyx Therapeutics. Dr. Kabir trained as an NCI-funded predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (under Dr. Jian Jin), carried out IND-enabling DMPK work at NIH/NCATS (under Dr. Xin Xu), and is the inventor of the AceTAC and Bridge-PROTAC degrader modalities. With 10+ years of experience in drug discovery and development, Dr. Kabir is leading the development of novel nanobody-drug-conjugate (NDC) and directs candidate design and regulatory strategy at Valenyx Therapeutics. Dr. Kabir brings a wealth of knowledge in the field of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology and is also the Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

A breast cancer survivor since 2000, I volunteer as a cancer research advocate, applying my personal experience as a patient, and professional experience in life science industry, to my cancer advocacy work. I am an advocate member of cancer research teams at multiple academic institutions across the US and in EU, and I serve as an advocate in the NCI Metastasis Network consortium. I serve on peer review panels for numerous cancer research granting agencies, including American Cancer Society, Susan Komen for the Cure, US Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, New York State Department of Health, and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. In my day job, I spent 40 years in life science industry consulting, investment and portfolio management, advising biotech, pharma, diagnostics and device companies, investment firms, universities and government agencies worldwide. Previously co-founder, venture partner and key person of Global Biomedical Partners, managing International Biomedicine Holdings, a $400 million biotech investment fund based in Basel, Switzerland, and business analyst in the corporate venture department at WR Grace.

Sai Ma, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research program develops experimental and computational technologies to define epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation at single-cell resolution across dynamic cell-state transitions. By integrating molecular biology, engineering, imaging, and bioinformatics, his group has established scalable single-cell and multimodal genomic approaches to study how DNA methylation, chromatin accessibility, three-dimensional genome organization, and gene expression interact to shape cell fate.
Dr. Ma’s laboratory applies these approaches to uncover regulatory mechanisms in development, aging, and disease, with a particular interest in brain development, hematopoiesis, cancer, and disease-associated cell-state transitions. His work combines technology development with mechanistic and functional studies to identify regulatory changes that precede and potentially drive phenotypic transformation. He has authored three patents and more than 50 publications. The long-term goal of his research is to uncover fundamental principles of epigenetic regulation and translate them into new strategies for understanding, detecting, and ultimately intervening in human disease

Sarah leads global regulatory policy and strategy for the U.S. and LATAM at Lilly. She joined the company as senior director of global regulatory policy and strategy for oncology before moving into her current role.

Before Lilly, Sarah was senior director of science and regulatory advocacy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), where she led regulatory advocacy on real-world evidence, clinical development, the human drug review program, and cell and gene therapies. Earlier, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), she led efforts to modernize the regulatory process and shaped programmatic and policy initiatives with FDA's Oncology Center of Excellence. She entered the policy field as a science policy fellow with the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Sarah earned her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, and holds an MS in animal and food science and a BS in animal science, both from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

Andriy Marusyk, PhD, is an Associate Member in the Department of Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis at Moffitt Cancer Center and an affiliate associate professor at the University of South Florida. He earned his PhD in Biophysics and Molecular Genetics from the University of Colorado Denver and completed postdoctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he studied tumor heterogeneity, evolution, and the tumor microenvironment. Since joining Moffitt in 2015, he has been focused on understanding the eco-evolutionary and phenotypic trajectories of acquired resistance to targeted and cytotoxic therapies. His research integrates experimental studies with mathematical modeling and spatial analyses to understand the interplay between cell-intrinsic, microenvironmental and systemic factors that shape treatment response. The long-term goal of this work is to develop more durable, evolution-informed therapeutic strategies for eradicating cancers or extending remissions.

Veronika Pister is a PhD candidate in Biological Engineering at MIT in Professor Ernest Fraenkel’s group. Her research integrates intratumoral microdevices with spatial omics to study cancer drug responses in vivo, with an emphasis on developing computational pipelines to resolve treatment-induced immune and metabolic changes within tumors. She earned her undergraduate degree in Bioengineering and Bioinformatics from the University of California, San Diego.

Heber L. Rocha is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington, where he works in Paul Macklin’s lab. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computational Modeling from the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC) in Brazil. He develops multiscale agent-based models of cancer progression, metastasis, and immune surveillance. He combines these models with uncertainty quantification and experimental and clinical data, working toward patient-specific cancer digital twins. He is also a core developer of the open-source PhysiCell platform and the lead developer of UQ-PhysiCell.

Dr. Kacey Ronaldson-Bouchard is a biomedical engineer, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Link Biosystems, and an Associate Research Scientist in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. Her work focuses on human stem cell-derived tissue models, organ-on-chip systems, and bioreactor technologies for disease modeling, drug discovery, and cell therapy manufacturing. She previously co-founded TARA Biosystems, an organ-on-chip company acquired by Valo Health, and has published in leading journals including Nature, Cell, Cell Stem Cell, and Nature Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Ronaldson-Bouchard earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University and her B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Florida.

Brennan is a Ph.D. student in the Cancer Biology Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine where he is part of Dr. Christina Curtis’s lab within the MetNet SBMC center. Brennan’s research interests include integrating spatial multiomics analysis with AI-based techniques to predict complex information from tumor histology images in order to identify features of the breast cancer microenvironment that dictate future disease progression and patient prognosis. Prior to his graduate training, Brennan received a B.S. in Biology from Duke University.

Diviya Sinha is a recent MIT PhD graduate specializing in immune engineering and drug delivery. She also holds an MS from MIT and a BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India. Diviya currently serves as Chair of the MC² Spatial Profiling Special Interest Group and is in transition between postdoctoral positions. She is an active STEM community organizer with MASS AWIS, where she leads outreach and professional development initiatives supporting women scientists.

Dr. Zahir is the Acting Director of the Center for Cancer Training and Director of the Cancer Training Branch where she leads a team of program directors managing cancer research fellowships, career development awards, training grants, and research education programs. She oversees an annual grants budget of over $200 Million corresponding to the administration of nearly 3,000 applications and over 1,100 active awards each year. Through her work over the past 17 years at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Zahir has fostered collaborative team science and supported cancer education, outreach, and advocacy activities spanning the cancer research continuum. She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering where she was recognized for her advocacy of training and support for engineering approaches to cancer research. Dr. Zahir's research experience has been in the areas of tissue engineering at the NIH for her postdoctoral fellowship, breast cancer mechanobiology at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioengineering for her graduate degree, and plasma physics and radiation biology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering.