T32 surgical oncology research training program

Greg Beatty, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist with internationally recognized expertise in pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy. His research is dedicated to advancing cancer treatment through innovative immunotherapeutic approaches. He has built a research program that uniquely combines basic science and clinical investigation to advance our understanding of cancer immunobiology and to develop novel therapies. His basic science research has made significant contributions in pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy by furthering our understanding of: (i) the role of monocytes/macrophages in tumor biology, metastasis, and treatment sensitivity, (ii) mechanisms coordinating cancer metastasis, (iii) regulation of T cell immunity in cancer, (iv) the liver's role in orchestrating immune evasion, and (v) the spatial contexture of the cellular and fibrotic tumor microenvironment. Utilizing cutting-edge technologies, his laboratory is equipped to conduct comprehensive studies using human tissues and genetic mouse models. Translating discoveries from the bench to bedside, he has led 6 first-in-human clinical studies investigating novel immunomodulatory agents and approaches, including IDO and JAK1 inhibitors, CD40 agonists, and CAR T cells. His program also investigates patient-derived tissues collected from clinical trials to study response and resistance mechanisms to treatment. He has partnered with cooperative groups and foundations, including PANCAN and SWOG, as well as industry partners and academic colleagues to conduct correlative science on tissues to inform treatment outcomes. His work has contributed to (i) defining a tumor-liver-immune axis with relevance to surgical outcomes for cancer and resistance to immunotherapy, (ii) the clinical design of strategies to appropriately sequence immunotherapy and cytotoxic therapy in cancer, (iii) therapeutic approaches to leverage the myeloid response to cancer for therapeutic benefit, and (iv) the initial studies with CAR T cells in solid cancer laying the foundation for its current development. His seeks to define mechanisms to sensitize cancer to productive immune surveillance and to identify approaches to disable mechanisms of resistance that undermine immunotherapy efficacy. Overall, the mission of his research is to advance the understanding of mechanisms regulating tumor-host biology with the primary goal to inform the development of novel therapeutic strategies for translation to the clinical setting.

Edward (Jim) Delikatny, PhD is a Research Professor of Radiology. He is the Director of the Small Animal Imaging Facility and Director of Translational Research for the Center for Precision Surgery at Penn. He has an interdisciplinary research program on cancer imaging and pharmacology research within the division of Molecular Imaging. His research interests are in noninvasive detection of lipid metabolic and environmental changes associated with tumor progression and response to therapy. His focus is on the development of targeted near-infrared (NIR) and radiolabeled contrast agents for optical imaging in tumor models and for fluorescence guided surgery. He has developed substrate mimetic fluorescent probes for detection of choline kinase, a lipid kinase overexpressed in a wide range of tumors. He has developed two classes of activatable probes for detection of signaling phospholipases A2 and C overexpressed in breast, prostate, and lung tumors. He has produced 18F and 68Ga labeled molecular imaging probes for the detection of tumor microenvironment pH or redox status using Cerenkov imaging. He is particularly interested in the translation of targeted NIR probes into a surgical setting, employing NIR contrast agents for intraoperative detection of tumor margins in mouse models of breast and lung cancer and their translation into the clinic. In collaboration with surgeons, he has translated his NIR ChoK and PLA2 probes to veterinary clinical trials for detection of non-small cell lung cancer in client-owned patient dogs. He has recently submitted a pre-IND application to the FDA for translation of ChoK probe into humans. He is committed to pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training having mentored 10 PhD students and 19 undergraduate students. He has won several teaching awards.

Ronald P. DeMatteo, MD became the John Rhea Barton Professor with tenure and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. He was recruited from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), where he was a Member with tenure (2007-16) and had a joint appointment in the Immunology Program of Sloan Kettering Institute. He held several leadership roles there, including Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery (2006-17), Head of the Division of General Surgical Oncology (2006-17), and Program Director of the Surgical Oncology Clinical Fellowship (2006-13). Of particular relevance to this proposal, he was the Associate Program Director of the T32 in Surgical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering from 2006-12 and then became the Principal Investigator for the competitive renewal (2012-17). Notably, he did his residency in General Surgery at Penn (1990-1997), during which he was funded by an NIH F32 grant to perform 2 years of research in gene therapy and immunology. He has made major contributions to both basic and translational research and clinical trials and thus is well positioned to oversee both the Basic/Translational and Clinical Tracks of this proposal. He has been funded to investigate liver immunology, liver inflammation, and tumor immunology. In particular, he has focused on molecular therapy and immunology of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), the most common human sarcoma. He led all 3 U.S. adjuvant trials of imatinib mesylate following the resection of GIST. He was the Principal Investigator of the CTEP-sponsored American College of Surgeons Oncology Group Z9001 trial that was the pivotal trial comparing adjuvant imatinib to placebo. The results led to FDA approval of adjuvant imatinib in 2009 and changed the standard of care worldwide. In the laboratory, he identified that the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib works partially through immune modulation. His laboratory has identified several other molecular inhibitors of GIST, and his findings have led to multiple clinical trials in human GIST patients. He has maintained NIH funding from 2001 through 2027, currently also serving as PI on an R01. He has been Chair of the Cancer Immunopathology and Immunotherapy (CII) study section. Dr. DeMatteo has over 500 papers and has senior author publications in Nature Medicine, Lancet, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cancer Research, and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dr. DeMatteo is an External Advisor for the T32 Surgical Oncology programs at MD Anderson, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and University of Michigan. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine. He is the past President of the Society of Surgical Oncology and a member of the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors.

Malay Haldar, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He cross trained in cancer biology, immunology, and clinical pathology. After completing his medical degree, he pursued PhD thesis research in sarcoma biology under the mentorship of a Nobel laureate and genetics pioneer Dr. Mario Capecchi at the University of Utah. He also completed a clinical residency in pathology and conducted post-doctoral research in immunology at the Washington University with Dr. Kenneth Murphy - an immunologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Haldar has built upon his diverse research and clinical background to establish a research program around mononuclear phagocytes (MPs), which include monocytes, dendritic cells (DC), and macrophages. MPs perform diverse functions - from controlling immune responses to maintaining tissue homeostasis. His laboratory studies the developmental and molecular basis of MP diversity and their roles in tissue homeostasis and disease states. In the context of human diseases, he is particularly interested in solid tumors where MPs play critical roles in initiating and regulating anti-tumor immune responses. His laboratory investigates the bi-directional cross talk between tumor microenvironment and MPs that underlie immunoregulatory functions of MPs. An overarching goal is to apply these insights for the next generation of cancer immunotherapy. His approach integrates data from human patients, genetically engineered mouse models, basic molecular biology, and high-dimensional cellular profiling to generate and test hypotheses.

Gerald P. Linette, MD, PhD is a Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Sean Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is a medical oncologist with expertise in cancer immunology. He has been actively involved in the development of new therapeutic approaches for solid tumors, including dendritic cell vaccines, gene therapy, adoptive T cell therapy, and checkpoint inhibitors since 1996. His laboratory group is comprised of clinical research fellows, graduate students, undergraduates as well as senior research investigators with specialization in molecular biology and cellular immunology. As part of a larger clinical multidisciplinary effort, he serves as the principal investigator for consortium and investigator-initiated clinical trials. His research focus is the identification of MHC class I-restricted cancer neoantigens and implementation of new cell therapy approaches for solid tumors. His group employs next-generation technologies through active collaborations with experts in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics. For the past 15 years, his team has profiled cutaneous melanoma to identify candidate epitopes for targeting the immune system. Recently, his group has isolated a series of TCRs specific for KRAS neoantigens. His team recently received funding from the NCI Cancer Adoptive Cell Therapy Network (Can-ACT) to initiate a phase I clinical trial for mutant KRAS solid tumors. His long-term goal is to advance cell therapies from the lab to first-in-human trials in the clinic.

Jarrod Predina, MD is a thoracic surgeon and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. His laboratory focuses on approaches to improve the care of early-stage lung cancer patients. His efforts can be categorized into three general areas: (1) investigating methods to improve detection and screening for early-stage lung cancer patients, (2) developing high-throughput animal models that recapitulate the biology of cancer surgery and post-operative recurrences and (3) exploring tumor immunology approaches to improve the native immune system’s ability to eradicate disease after lung cancer surgery (adjuvant immunotherapy). He has expertise in bringing emerging technologies, such as intraoperative molecular imaging and neoadjuvant intratumoral immunotherapy, from the preclinical setting to first-in-human clinical trials. Through these endeavors, his laboratory has developed expertise in a wide variety of animal models of lung cancer that can be used to evaluate new screening and diagnostic approaches. He analyzes human samples from clinical trials. The lab also has the broad experience in molecular, pathologic, and immunologic assays needed for the study of cancer biology. He will require a co-mentor until he develops adequate funding to be an independent T32 mentor.

Sunil Singhal, MD, MBA is the William Maul Measey Professor of Surgical Research with tenure. He is the Vice Chair of Translational Research within the Department of Surgery and the Director of the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn. In addition, he is a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group at Penn. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and had postdoctoral clinical training at Johns Hopkins. He spent 2 years in tumor immunology research on a T32 training grant. Dr. Singhal has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians.

His current research interests span two major areas: molecular imaging of lung cancer and tumor immunology. He is a nationally recognized leader in the field of intraoperative molecular imaging. He studies the enhanced permeability and retention effect for delivering fluorescent nanoparticles to solid tumors. He also uses receptor targeted approaches, such as folate receptor and VEGF receptor, to direct fluorescent contrast agents to tumor cells during surgery. His lab has developed several large animal models and invented 2 near-infrared exoscopic imaging devices. His work has been translated to over 19 human clinical trials, including the largest multicenter Phase III international clinical trial in molecular imaging. These clinical trials in various cancer specialties have enrolled over 1,200 patients. Dr. Singhal’s other research interest lies in myeloid cell infiltration of non-small cell lung tumors. His collaboration with Dr. Evgeniy Eruslanov has resulted in the first comprehensive phenotypic and functional characterization of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) in early-stage lung cancer patients. Currently, Dr. Singhal is the PI of a Phase I clinical trial of neoadjuvant gene therapy for T cell stimulation prior to surgery for lung cancer.

He is the Principal Investigator of a $9.8 million NIH Program Project for intraoperative molecular imaging of lung cancer. He is also Principal Investigator of 2 other R01 grants in other areas of biomedical imaging. He has had multiple other grants including a transformative R01 award from the NIH Director’s Office for innovative research. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a $4.1 million NIH Biomedical Research Partnership, and he is PI of an R01 to investigate molecular contrast agents in humans with non-small cell lung cancer. He has published in Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Cell, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Communications, Cancer Research, and Clinical Cancer Research.

Dr. Singhal has trained over 40 pre- and postdoctoral laboratory fellows and more than 15 clinical fellows in cardiothoracic surgery.

Robert Vonderheide, MD, DPhil is a medical oncologist and the John H. Glick MD Professor. He is the Director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Vice Dean for Cancer Programs for the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Vice President for Cancer Programs for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. His laboratory combines efforts in both basic research and clinical investigation to advance the understanding of tumor immunology and to develop novel immunotherapies for cancer. He has a particular research focus in deciphering the immunobiology of pancreatic cancer. The basic research in his laboratory includes genetically engineered mouse models of cancer, computational biology, and the study of immune surveillance and the tumor microenvironment. His translational work tests novel approaches such as vaccines, antibodies, and adoptive T cells for the treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer and breast cancer. He also studies ‘universal’ tumor antigens such as hTERT and KRAS and other immune modulatory pathways involving CD40, COX2, PD-1, and CTLA-4. He has served as supervisor for several dozen graduate students and post-graduate fellows (laboratory and clinical) and am a trainer on multiple NIH K12 and T32 training grants in cancer. He has been a primary mentor for multiple K08/K23 trainees who have gone on to academic research faculty positions. As cancer center director, he supervises the Associate Director of Education and Training who oversees a large portfolio of cancer education, training, and career enhancement initiatives.

Jennifer Zhang, MD is a breast cancer surgeon and Assistant Professor of Surgery. She completed a clinical fellowship in Breast Surgical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2021, which laid the foundation for understanding the nuances of breast cancer care, including the most updated practices involving new therapeutics and management. She is interested in examining strategies of circumventing mechanisms of immune evasion in breast cancer, particularly in hormone receptor-positive tumors. She has worked for 3 years in the laboratory of Bob Vonderheide, Director of the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn. She has produced compelling preliminary data and received a National Cancer Institute Early-stage Surgeon Scientist Program award and four internal grants in support of her work. She has also received a Komen Leadership Grant. She is currently preparing a manuscript on dendritic cell activation in breast cancer and will translate this preclinical work on agonistic CD40 into a window of opportunity clinical trial in early-stage breast cancer. Previously, she discovered that the immune activation effects of CD40 agonism in combination with tyrosine kinase inhibition in GIST was dependent mainly on tumor-associated macrophages.

Angela DeMichele, MD, MSCE is a medical oncologist and a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and holds the Jill and Alan Miller Endowed Chair in Breast Cancer Excellence. Her research focuses on drug development, particularly in the neoadjuvant setting, investigation of prognostic and predictive biomarkers, and design of novel approaches to identify and treat minimal residual disease to prevent recurrence. Nationally, she chairs the ECOG/ACRIN Cooperative Group Breast Committee. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium and a member of the I-SPY2 Breast Trial Consortium leadership. She was the Scientific Program Chair for the ASCO 2024 Annual Meeting. Internationally, she is a member of the St. Gallen Early Breast Cancer Panel and ESMO Early Breast Cancer Program Committee. At the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center, she Co-Directs the 2-PREVENT Translational Center of Excellence and Co-Leads the ACC Breast Cancer Program. In these roles, she has built a multidisciplinary, peer-review funded research program and developed translational resources, including a comprehensive biobank and database. She is the PI of numerous translational epidemiologic studies and investigator-initiated clinical trials, including the Wellness After Breast Cancer longitudinal cohort study, the PENN-SURMOUNT MRD Screening Study, and the CLEVER and PALAVY Trials. In addition, she has trained the next generation of clinical researchers through thesis advising and mentorship in the Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) as a Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics. Her experience and expertise in all aspects of cancer epidemiologic and clinical trial study design and implementation and biomarker development qualify her to be a T32 mentor.

Phyllis Gimotty, PhD is a Professor of Biostatistics. She has extensive experience in biostatistical methods related to the analysis of the development of prognostic models and the evaluation of biomarkers with over thirty years of experience in biostatistics related to translational cancer research. She works with research investigators who are interested in the immune system and the tumor microenvironment as well as cancer biomarkers and their relationship to clinical outcomes. She has collaborated with Dr. Karakousis and his residents/fellow for over ten years on research projects related to melanoma. In addition to being a member of the Abramson Cancer Center’s Biostatistical Unit at the University of Pennsylvania (P30-CA016520), she is the Director of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the SPORE on Skin Cancer (P50CA 261608). The statistical areas she focuses on are the development of predictive and prognostic models and the evaluation of genomic and genetic biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis. Her research areas include development of new statistical methods for evaluating biomarkers that have non-standard ROC curves, enhancing biostatistical methods for estimating conditional survival, as well as evaluating methods related to non-linear dose-response regression modeling. She developed a graduate level course on multivariable predictive modeling for the students in the Master’s degree program that she teaches. Currently, she is a member of the Evidence-based Medicine Core for the 9th Edition of the American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) staging guidelines and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. She has previously been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Investigation as well as a statistical consultant for Nature journals.

Giorgos Karakousis, MD is the Emilie and Roland T. deHellenbranth Professor in Surgery II. He is a sarcoma and melanoma surgeon and Chief of the Division of Endocrine and Oncologic Surgery. He is a Project Clinical Leader in the Wistar/Penn Skin Cancer SPORE. He is the Chair of the Cancer Committee of the Abramson Cancer Center. HE is on the Melanoma Leadership team in the Cancer Service Line at Penn Medicine. He represents Penn Melanoma at the National Comprehensive Caner Network (NCCN) meetings. He recently served as the Chair of the Melanoma Disease Site Working Group for the Society of Surgical Oncology. He is an active member of the ECOG-ACRIN Melanoma Committee and on the Melanoma section of 3 editorial boards. He chairs the Scientific Committee of the Sentinel Lymph Node Working Group. He has over 350 peer-reviewed publications. He has played an instrumental role in developing new biomarkers of response to immune checkpoint inhibition in Stage II and IV melanoma, and in the development of mitotic index as a biomarker of poor prognosis in thin melanoma. He has also conducted extensive epidemiological and mechanistic preclinical studies with SPORE collaborators to better characterize the microenvironment of the sentinel lymph node, and how to utilize the sentinel lymph node biopsy information to improve clinical care in the changing landscape of early-stage melanoma therapy. He has a long track record of mentoring and has over 300 publications.

Rachel Kelz, MD, MSCE, MBA is the William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery and the founding Director of the Center for Surgery and Health Economics in the Department of Surgery. She is the Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery. She completed her Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Penn and is a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI). She spent 2 years as a postdoctoral outcomes research fellow with Jeffrey H. Silber MD PhD, a renowned health services researcher and faculty member at Penn. During that time, Dr. Kelz also worked with Dr. DeMichele, a mentor of this T32. Dr. Kelz has published more than 300 manuscripts.

Her research interests span 3 major areas: healthcare organization and delivery, medical education, and healthcare disparities. She is nationally recognized in the field of healthcare disparities. She studies the association between patient and provider attributes and optimal surgical care. Dr. Kelz is also internationally known for her pioneering work in surgical education and patient outcomes. She is the first to study the effects of duty hour reform on outcomes of new surgeons after the transition to practice. Her group is working to establish evidence to inform practices in surgical education. Dr. Kelz serves as an invited participant to the AAMC, ACGME, APDS, and ACS work groups on the integration of resident education and surgical quality and safety. Her work has informed decisions on curriculum reform in surgery and sparked a national interest in providing evidence to support surgical training paradigms. This work is relevant to the current proposal in that half of surgical oncology is performed by general surgeons without advanced training in oncology. As such, understanding the role of oncologic training in residency as it relates to cancer care is of tremendous value to patients with surgically treated malignancy. Dr. Kelz has extended this work into the assessment of healthcare delivery at the system level with a focus on cancer care. Using advanced analytics and simulation, Dr. Kelz is building models to inform cancer care delivery and improve care at the individual and system levels.

She recently completed an R01 to inform treatment decisions for surgical emergencies. This grant examined patients presenting with benign and malignant diseases in addition to ranking hospitals based on performance in the management of these conditions. In addition, via a diversity supplement and an F32 using shared resources, two post-doctoral residents completed formal training in medical ethics and clinical epidemiology. She is also the PI on a grant from the NIMHD that aims to advance colorectal cancer care and reduce known disparate outcomes among Black patients. Dr. Kelz has also received generous foundation funding to support educational programs to train future surgeon-scientists interested in health services research. The applications of her work to cancer care delivery are numerous, including advances in care coordination, discovery, and dissemination of best practices, reduction of unnecessary variation and waste, and improved patient and caregiver engagement. She has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cancer, Annals of Surgery, and JAMA Surgery.

Dr. Kelz has trained over 25 pre- and postdoctoral research fellows and more than 100 clinical residents in endocrine and oncologic surgery. Dr. Kelz was awarded the Mentorship Award by the Department of Surgery (2014) and the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award by the Provost (2011), which is the highest teaching award given at the University of Pennsylvania. Recently, the Perelman School of Medicine awarded her the Samuel Martin Health Evaluation Sciences Research Award and the FOCUS Award for the Advancement of Women in Medicine.

Robert S. Krouse, MD is a Professor Surgery with tenure and the Chief of Surgery at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is a surgical oncologist. His current research program focuses primarily on cancer survivorship, including palliative care. He has a long history with inter-disciplinary research, leading and participating in teams that include surgeons, nursing researchers, epidemiologists, anthropologists, health economists, psychologists, nutritionists, medical anthropologists and statisticians. He is the PI of an NIH-funded R01 (Ostomy Telehealth Self-Management Training for Cancer Survivors) presenting the curriculum to rural populations utilizing telehealth to deliver the program. He has completed accrual and is in the final follow-up data collection phase. It is designed with patient-centered outcomes and is based on cancer survivor input from both a pilot study and from previous health-related quality of life (HRQOL) studies on patient-identified challenges related to living with an ostomy. His team has also completed a similar PCORI-funded grant (Ostomy Telehealth for Cancer Survivors). He is the Co-Chair of the SWOG Palliative and End-of-Life Care Committee, and previously the co-Chair of the SWOG Cancer Survivorship Committee, He has helped to initiate, shepherd, and complete national trials related to cancer survivorship and palliative care issues.

Katharine Nathanson, MD is a medical oncologist and a Professor of Medicine and Genetics, and the Deputy Director of the Abramson Cancer Center. She Is an internationally recognized physician-scientist cancer geneticist. Clinically, she manages patients with inherited cancer susceptibility syndromes, mainly those associated with brain, skin, renal, and neuroendocrine tumors. Her research career has focused on the translation of genetics into improvements in patient care. Specifically, her research has elucidated the genetic etiology of testicular germ cell tumor, pinpointing variation associated with genes that encode proteins important for male germ cell development as critical. Her findings have led to multiple insights around moderate and high penetrance genes in which mutations are associated with breast cancer susceptibility, with recent large population-based studies, and seminal insights into allele-specific loss of heterozygosity and linkage of molecular features to immunogenicity. Across all these studies, she has participated in or led large consortium, including the Consortium for the Identification of Modifiers of BRCA1/2, Testicular Cancer Consortium, Confluence, and several TGCA working groups. My clinical and research program are nationally and internationally recognized, and I have been a thought leader in cancer genetics for over a decade and have over 400 publications. She has a long track record of mentoring and an MPI for a T32 post-doctoral NHGRI training grant in Genomic Medicine.

Katharine Rendle, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine & Community Health and of Epidemiology. She is an interdisciplinary behavioral scientist with expertise in pragmatic trials, implementation science, mixed methods, and cancer prevention and control. She is the Director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation (PC3I), Director of Cancer Implementation Research at the Penn Implementation Science Center (PISCE), a full member of the Abramson Cancer Center, and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. As an independent investigator, she leads a robust research program that integrates diverse quantitative and qualitative methods to improve the equity, effectiveness, and implementation of high-quality cancer care. A substantial portion of her work has focused on designing and testing strategies in the context of routine practice to improve the delivery of cancer screening and care in the United States and Botswana. She is the PI of the Penn Telehealth Research Center of Excellence (P50CA271338), an innovative Center grant that seeks to integrate telehealth equitably across the cancer care continuum. She also leads the Pragmatic Trial and Research and Methods Core within the overall Center. She is the site PI of the Lung Population-based Research to Optimize the Screening Process (PROSPR) Research Center, a large multi-site research consortium designed to assess and improve lung, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening across healthcare systems (1UM1CA221939). Additionally, she is an MPI of a large implementation trial in Botswana that seeks to improve timely treatment in women living with HIV and diagnosed with cervical cancer (U01CA275032). As a methodological expert in mixed methods, she co-leads the Methods Core of the Penn Implementation Science Center for Cancer (1P50CA244690), an innovative project designed to improve implementation of evidence-based interventions in cancer care. Throughout my work, she has served as the primary mentor for over 30 trainees from undergraduate to junior faculty domestically and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Building upon my expertise in cancer care delivery, pragmatic trials, and implementation science, I am well-suited to serve as mentor.

Heather Wachtel, MD, MTR is an endocrine surgeon and an Associate Professor of Surgery. She is a physician-scientist with a research focus on neuroendocrine and adrenal tumors. Her translational research has three primary lines of investigation: 1) accurate characterization of phenotypic variance in germline susceptibility mutations associated with hereditary neuroendocrine tumors; 2) quantification of genomic evidence for DNA damage response in pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma as a potential mechanism of tumorigenesis; and 3) identification of genomic drivers of tumor progression in metastatic pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma. Her research is directly relevant to her clinical practice treating patients with endocrine tumors. Her overarching goal is to combine genotypic and phenotypic data to enhance understandings of basic pathophysiology and identify novel therapeutic targets for neuroendocrine and adrenal tumors. She works closely with Kate Nathanson on the molecular genetics of pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma. She currently has a K08.