2023 Cancer PhD Outstanding Research Award Recipients

The annual Outstanding Student Research Award recognizes students in the Cancer PhD Program who demonstrate an exceptional level of performance in research as evidenced by mentor evaluations, conference presentations, publications, etc. We are delighted to announce that Chris Letson and Elliot Medina were selected as the recipients of this award for 2023.

Chris Letson
Major Professor: Dr. Eric Padron

• Finding novel drug combinations that could help treat Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) and determining the mechanism that drives synergy in these combinations.

• First Author Paper in Clinical Cancer Research with an average IF of 11.5

Elliot Medina
Major Professor: Dr. Vince Luca

• Interested in how cell-cell communication gives rise to polarity within tissues, and how dysregulation of this can promote aberrant proliferation, invasiveness, and metastasis in cancer.

• First Author Paper in Nature Communications with an average IF of 16.6