It was the highlight of my MSTP training to connect my two PhD labs through high-impact projects focused on brain cancer immunotherapy. In the Cassady Lab, I conducted preclinical murine brain tumor studies using stereotactic surgery to administer intracranial oncolytic virotherapies, while in the Mardis Lab I used state-of-the-art immunogenomics techniques and performed computational analyses to measure how these oncolytic virotherapy treatments altered immune responses to brain tumors in vivo. This cross-training enabled me to become skilled in a particularly wide breadth of both wet lab and dry lab techniques paramount to cancer immunotherapy. It also allowed me to identify unfilled knowledge gaps and recognize opportunities to integrate techniques across my lab environments to test novel hypotheses—giving me invaluable experience in shaping ideas and taking my first steps as an independent scientist. This work brought me into close proximity with neurosurgeon-scientists and clinical trials paralleling my mouse studies, allowing me to witness firsthand how research and clinical insights inform one another and fueling my motivation to catalyze this crosstalk as a physician-scientist.

My long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist with a basic and translational immunology lab pursuing high-impact discoveries that 1) define therapeutically-relevant immunologic mechanisms and 2) apply knowledge of those mechanisms in creative ways to develop novel immunotherapies. The immune system is an astonishingly intricate and versatile molecular network optimized to interface with endogenous human biochemistry, capable of ‘learning’ enormous arrays of shifting molecular targets, and with unparalleled ability to selectively modify physiology. Thus, I view the immune system in part as a living, programmable therapeutic platform whose modification and redirection via immunotherapy holds potential to profoundly improve our ability to treat and even eradicate a vast array of diseases. Increasingly sophisticated molecular characterization platforms such as single cell sequencing and spatial omics are revolutionizing our ability to define and measure complex, heterogenous disease processes at incredibly high resolution. Making use of such insights to formulate therapies capable of hitting many targets with conditionality and precision in living patients is a complex task, but it’s something I believe immunotherapy has unique potential for. During PhD training I applied my interest in immunotherapy specifically in the context of cancer - whose heterogeneity and dynamic nature has been a powerful teacher spurring many major scientific advances, and a field in which I can envision establishing myself as an investigator long-term. Yet I also believe that moving the field of immunotherapy toward its true potential holds exciting implications extending far beyond cancer, impacting treatments across virtually every other branch of medicine and enabling novel applications to safeguard human health in the face of challenges that may not even be known yet, such as those encountered by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight or off-planet missions. I am deeply inspired to use my training as a physician scientist, passion for the immune system, and growing interest in aerospace medicine to integrate these topics as a surgeon-scientist, working on highly motivated teams to help solve complex challenges and impact the lives of patients.