News

Spring of Conferences!

This Spring, our fellows are presenting their work at a plethora of conferences and annual meetings. Our UI Cancer Center hosted their Gary Kruh Annual Symposium on April 3rd. Our postdoctoral fellows will also be presenting at the American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) from April 12-15 and the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) Annual Meeting from April 22-25. A full list of presentations are below, we are very proud of our fellows!

Presentations:

Gary Kruh

• Kaitlin Chakos, “Feasibility of Time-Restricted Eating During Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer” **Winner, Cancer Prevention and Control

ASPO

SBM

T32 alums and staff presented at the 16th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved – American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). We recognize them for their outstanding presentations:

1. Catherine M. Pichardo, NCI, Rockville, Maryland – Association of neighborhood gentrification with prostate cancer in African American and European American men.
2. Carola T. Sanchez-Diaz, Cancer Epidemiology and Health Outcomes, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey – The association of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions with patient-reported outcomes and lifestyle behaviors among breast cancer survivors: Evidence from a cohort of Black and Hispanic breast cancer survivors in New Jersey.

We congratulate recent alumni on progress in their careers:

• Postdoctoral fellow Natalicio Serrano has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at UNC Gillings School of Public Health in Fall 2023.
• Predoctoral fellow Mirielle Nauman successfully defended her dissertation in December 2022 and accepted the Ben May Cancer Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Chicago.
• Postdoctoral fellow Patricia Wolf has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University in Spring 2022.
• Predoctoral fellow Catherine Pichardo successfully defended her dissertation in December 2021 and accepted a Postdoctoral Fellow Cancer Research Training Award (CRTA) at the National Cancer Institute.
• After completing the program, postdoctoral fellow Shaila Strayhorn began a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Health and Applied Human Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
• After successfully defending her dissertation in April 2021, Carola Sanchez-Diaz began a postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University.
• After successfully defending her dissertation in March 2021, Alpana Kaushiva accepted a position as Senior Research Scientist at ConcertAI in Chicago.
• Dr. Jennifer Sanchez-Flack completed our postdoctoral program in December 2020 and accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UIC’s College of Medicine.
• Predoctoral fellow, Sabrina Young, successfully defended her dissertation entitled “The Role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Food Insecurity and Food Acquisitions” in May 2020, and accepted a position as a Research Agricultural Economist for the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• CECDP predoctoral alumna Karla Castellanos successfully defended her dissertation entitled “Pancreatic Cancer Chemoprevention by Metformin in a High Fat Diet“ in August 2020 and began a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at UIC’s College of Medicine.