Current Fellows in the Trans-Divisional Research Program

Dr. Balasubramanian, research fellow in the Data Science and Engineering Research Group of TDRP, is working with Jonas S. Almeida, Ph.D., and several other collaborators on various projects, including developing: absolute risk models for breast cancer and its subtypes from studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC); polygenic risk models for prostate cancer from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer (PLCO) study; machine learning methods for the representation and modeling of somatic mutational signatures; and developing and deploying portable and privacy-preserving web applications for public health e.g., absolute risk calculators.

Mr. Bhawsar, predoctoral fellow in the Data Science and Engineering Research Group of TDRP, is conducting research on setting up reusable artificial intelligence (AI) pipelines for digital pathology, under the mentorship of Jonas S. Almeida, Ph.D.

Ms. Toniya Brown works with the Connect for Cancer Prevention Study, assisting with coordinating the cross-national sites with an emphasis on the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority participants.

Dr. Dmukauskas, postdoctoral fellow in the Trans-Divisional Research Program, explores sex and geographical differences in primary brain tumors and central nervous system metastases as well as maternal exposures and brain tumors, under the mentorship of Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan, Ph.D.

Mr. Edelson, postbaccalaureate fellow in TDRP, is developing accessible and privacy-preserving polygenic risk scores for cancer as well as to determine genetic biomarkers that vary by ancestry in the genetically diverse participants of the CONNECT study. His mentors are Jonas S. Almeida, Ph.D., and Mitchell Machiela, Sc.D. , M.P.H.

Dr. Hurson, a postdoctoral fellow in TDRP, studies etiologic heterogeneity of breast cancer subtypes. Her doctoral research evaluated an RNA-based gene signature, which detects TP53 pathway function, as an additional etiologic and prognostic marker in breast cancer. Her mentor is Montserrat Garcia-Closas, M.D., Dr.P.H.

Mr. Mason, predoctoral fellow in the Data Science & Engineering Research Group of TDRP, is conducting research focused on interactive visual analysis of time-series data, under the mentorship of Jonas S. Almeida, Ph.D., Director of Data Science, DCEG, and Dr. Blánaid Hicks at Queen's University Belfast.

Ms. Sandoval, predoctoral fellow in TDRP, is studying health disparities in cancer with a focus on policy interventions, using serverless architecture and data visualization. Her mentor is Jonas S. Almeida, Ph.D.

Ms. Aleah Thomas, postbaccalaureate fellow in TDRP, works on the Connect for Cancer Prevention Cohort study. She is researching electronic recruitment and retention methods to target individuals of diverse backgrounds and geographies, under the mentorship of Dr. Mia Gaudet.