Early Career Investigators

DF/HCC Celebration of Early Career Investigators in Cancer Research

Early career investigators are a unique reservoir of new ideas, innovation, and excellence in cancer research. To celebrate this, we welcome you to join the 12th Annual DF/HCC Celebration of Early Investigators in Cancer Research. This symposium will showcase the talent of early career investigators at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) who work in several areas of population science, including epidemiology, biostatistics, outcomes, diversity, and survivorship. We invite all members of the public to attend the event. We also invite students, post-docs, residents, clinical fellows, and early career investigators to submit abstracts for consideration as oral or poster presentations. We look forward to an exciting afternoon of discussion, sharing new discoveries, and building new collaborations. – Lorelei Mucci, ScD (HSPH), Giovanni Parmigiani, PhD (DFCI), Erica Feick (DFCI), Hannah Guard (HSPH), and Megan Shanahan (HSPH).

This event will be held at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the Yawkey Conference Center. Currently, the event will be held in-person; however, adjustments to the event status will be considered if there are changes to masking regulations.

2024 Award Winners

Best Oral Presentation:

Noah Chigier (DFCI) and Brett Ranieri (DFCI)

Most Innovative Idea:

Phillip Nicol (HU)

Best Poster Presentation:

Kelcie Willis (MGH)

2024 Agenda

DECEMBER 3, 2024

1:00 – 1:10 pm 10 minutes	Welcome and Introductions Ramesh Shivdasani, MD, PhD, Deputy Director of the DF/HCC Lorelei A. Mucci, ScD, MPH, Deputy Associate Director of the Population Science Programs at the DF/HCC Brittany M. Charlton, ScD, Co-leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at the DF/HCC
1:10 – 2:00 pm 50 minutes	Keynote Speaker Scout, Ph.D., M.A. Executive Director of the National LGBT Cancer Network Visit Profile Talk Title: When Your Career Is Both Your Passion Project & A Political Football Abstract: I completed my PhD in Sociomedical Sciences with a concentration on LGBTQI+ health right as we changed over from one of the most welcoming presidential administrations to one of the most hostile on this topic to date - things were looking grim about my professional prospects. Perhaps because of this I moved into using my and other people's research to forward policy advocacy for my communities. En route to today I learned a lot about how policy is usually shaped by the experts in our field, experts like yourselves; how to poke the head of NIH enough until he starts asking you to serve; and the power of ghostwriting to change the world. Much of this work is necessarily very quiet, since the best policy moves leave someone else thinking they had the good idea. So come learn how scientists and clinicians are needed on the advocacy landscape and how you can multiply your community impact regardless of who's using your passion project as a political football.
2:00 – 2:45 pm 45 minutes	Oral Presentation (part 1) Cong Wang, PhD, MPH: Inflammatory proteomic signatures of metabolically unhealthy obesity Ava Kikut-Stein, PhD: A community based participatory research approach to promoting equity in adolescent and young adult cancer communication Sarah Piombo, PhD, MPH: The impact of community connectedness on tobacco refusal skills among youth in India from low socio-economic backgrounds Noah Chigier, BKin and Brett Ranieri, BA: Impact of fatigue and sleep quality on exercise adherence among Latina and/or Hispanic breast cancer survivors
2:45 – 3:00 pm 15 minutes	Break
3:00 – 3:45 45 minutes	Oral Presentation (part 2) LeeAnn Lucas, MS: Early-life risk factors and higher-grade prostate cancer Phillip Nicol, MA: Phylogeographic-based estimation of tumor cell motility from spatially resolved single-cell sequencing data Yuliya Leontyeva, PhD: Selection bias built into hazard ratios – an empirical demonstration in a large precision oncology trial Carmen Rodriguez Cabrera, AM, MPH: A Bayesian mixture model approach to examining neighborhood social determinants of health disparities in endometrial cancer treatment in Massachusetts Yoshitaka Nishikawa, MD, PhD: Thyroid screening outcomes and stable iodine intake among children after the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident in Japan.
3:45 – 5:00 pm 1 hour, 15 minutes	Poster Session and Reception [Poster Abstract Booklet] Hanan Abdelrahman, PhD: Symptoms prevalence and quality of life among cancer survivors in Oman Mina Bakhtiar, MD: Substance use, cancer incidence, and mortality among Medicare beneficiaries Mary Boulanger, MD: Pilot feasibility trial of a supportive care digital application “THRIVE” for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer Maria Bustamante Molina, BS: The impact of gender-affirming care on cancer risk and screening practices in transgender populations: a narrative review Xueying Chen, BS: Fam3PRO: A web-based user interface for a multi-gene, multi-cancer risk prediction model for families with cancer history Nick Falkenberg, BA: Ambient PM_2.5 air pollution exposure and colorectal cancer incidence in wildfire-impacted areas in the United States Joyce Gong: Development of a tool for understanding the impact of gender-affirming care on cancer risks for trans and gender-diverse patients Kimberly Greco, BS, MPH: A semi-supervised framework to enhance rare disease phenotyping from electronic health records Shweta Gupta, PhD: Exosome-mediated smart and targeted drug delivery for cancer theranostics Nicolas Kubista, MSc: Methods and software for penetrance estimation in family-based cancer penetrance studies Phuong Anh Le, MS: Inflammatory and insulinemic dietary patterns during adolescence and risk of invasive breast cancer among US women Daniel Lee-Hassett: Effect of a 16-week multimodal exercise intervention on muscular strength in breast, prostate and colorectal cancer survivors Nan Lin, PhD: The role of distress-related metabolic dysfunction in ovarian cancer development Qiang Liu, MD: Pre- and post-diagnostic healthy lifestyle and cardiovascular disease among breast cancer survivors Colleen McGrath, MS: Caregiver characteristics and quality of life in patients with prostate cancer in the Detroit Research of Cancer Survivors study Jennifer Mongiovi, PhD, MS: Contraception and ovarian cancer tumor immune profiles Emma O’Neil, BA, BS: Adapting the tumor board model for serious mental illness and cancer: Identification and enrollment of patients at the North Shore Andrea Romanos-Nanclares, PhD: Dietary insulinemic potential and survival after breast cancer diagnosis Maria Sol Rosito, PhD: Automated deduplication of pedigree datasets: A tree-based machine learning approach Patrick Ryan, PhD: ATG4B is an oncogene in lung adenocarcinoma Daniel Schwartz, PhD: Improved risk stratification of smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) using trajectory data in the PANGEA 2.0 model: A multicenter study in 1,431 participants Koki Takabatake, MPH: Age-specific risk of ovarian cancer in families with PALB2 Ehab Tawfils, BPharm: Alcohol intake and risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma: a pooled analysis of 14 prospective cohort studies Satoko Ugai, MD, PhD, MPH: Association of Bacteroides fragilis and enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis with specific T-cell subsets in the colorectal carcinoma microenvironment Xingyan Wang, PhD: Genetic variants associated with ductal carcinoma in situ in women from the UK Biobank Siqi Wang, MS: Kelcie Willis, PhD: Coping in caregivers of patients with primary malignant brain tumors: A mediation analysis of a randomized controlled trial Mingxiao Yang, MD, PhD: Tai Chi for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy: clinical trial design informed by existing evidence from non-cancer population Sayeda Yasmin-Karim, MD, MS, PhD: Aerosol delivery of Hesperetin loaded nanoparticles and immunotherapy increases survival in a murine lung cancer model Xinyuan (Cindy) Zhang, PhD: Association between per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and liver cancer risk Alessandro Zito, PhD: Compressive Bayesian non-negative matrix factorization for mutational signature analysis
5:00 pm	Award Announcement Best Oral Presentation Most Innovative Idea Best Poster Presentation

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