Primary Investigators
Tim A. Ahles, PhD
Tim Ahles is a practicing clinician within the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr Ahles was recruited to develop and direct the Neurocognitive Research Laboratory, which focuses upon examining cognitive changes associated with cancer and cancer treatments. Dr. Ahles’ interests and expertise focuses on cognitive-behavioral interventions designed to improve symptom management and to reduce stress associated with cancer and cancer treatments. Dr. Ahles’ current research focuses on assessing the impact of chemotherapy by measuring the alteration in gene expression by DNA damage induced pre-mature senescence in the brain of a rodent model system.
Karen Hubbard, PhD
Karen Hubbard is a molecular biologist who studies gene expression during cellular aging. Dr. Hubbard teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses in the Biology Department at City College. Dr. Hubbard’s research interest includes RNA metabolism during aging and the relationship between cell death (apoptosis) and aging. Dr. Hubbard’s current research focuses on assessing the impact of chemotherapy by measuring the alteration in gene expression by DNA damage induced pre-mature senescence in the brain of a rodent model system. Dr. Hubbard also co-directs ET CURE, a program that trains young scientists and physicians in oncologic molecular imaging.
Investigators
Maria Binz-Scharf, PhD
Maria Christina Binz-Scharf is Associate Professor of Management in the Economics Department at the City College of New York (CUNY), and a Research Fellow at the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. Her research focuses on the processes of knowledge sharing across organizational and socially constructed boundaries, with a particular interest in the role information technologies play in these processes. Using ethnographic methods, she has examined informal communication structures in various settings. Currently, Dr. Binz-Scharf is working on a pilot project that includes tailoring and enhancing an evidence-based cancer clinical trials training for community-based primary care physicians in New York City who serve underrepresented patients.
Victoria S. Blinder, MD
Victoria S. Blinder is an assistant attending physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Blinder's main research interest is in ethnic disparities in survivorship outcomes among women treated for breast cancer. Additional research interests include ethnic disparities in breast cancer care and the financial impact of breast cancer on economically disadvantaged populations. Dr. Blinder’s current research includes a multi-center study of ethnic differences in the impact of breast cancer on employment status, financial situation, and quality of life.
Carol Brown, MD, FACOG, FACS
Carol Brown is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In addition to treating women with cancer, Dr. Brown’s career is focused on the reduction and elimination of cancer health disparities experienced by medically underserved populations; and promoting public policy to increase awareness, improve care, and increase research funding for gynecologic and other cancers both locally and nationally. Currently, Dr. Brown is Co-PI of the Partnership Community Outreach Program (PCOP), a component of the Partnership dedicated to helping communities to take full advantage of the potential for community-academic collaborations to improve public health.
Jack E. Burkhalter, PhD
Jack Burkhalter is a clinical health psychologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Burkhalter specializes in cancer prevention, with a focus on smoking cessation and treatment of psychological distress in patients with lung cancer. Dr. Burkhalter’s research interests include developing and testing innovative treatments for tobacco dependence among cancer patients and those at high risk for the disease; conducting research that evaluates the quality of life of lung cancer survivors; and identifying and reducing cancer-related health disparities among the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender populations. Currently, Dr. Burkhalter’s research focuses on addressing the impact of gay-related stress on disparities between sexual-minority and heterosexual youths and across sexual-minority youths in cancer-related risk behaviors directly and indirectly by means of psychological distress; and building a community-academic partnership and infrastructure to identify and address the needs of the underserved PLWHA at risk for HIV/AIDS-related cancers.
Carma Bylund, PhD
Carma Bylund is an Associate Attending Behavioral Scientist and Director of the Communication Skills Training and Research Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Bylund’s areas of expertise are clinician-patient communication and family communication about health. Dr. Bylund’s primary research interest is developing, implementing, and assessing interventions to improve patient-clinician communication, with a focus on working with medically underserved populations. Currently, Dr. Bylund is working on a pilot project that includes tailoring and enhancing an evidence-based cancer clinical trials training for community-based primary care physicians in New York City who serve underrepresented patients.
Avrom Caplan, PhD
Avrom Caplan is a professor of Biology at City College. Dr. Caplan currently serves as the CUNY Associate University Dean for Research. Dr. Caplan’s current research focuses on addressing the use of Hsp90 molecular chaperone inhibitors to promote cancer cell death.
Prabal De, PhD
Prabal De is an assistant professor of economics at City College. Dr. De’s research interests lie in the fields of Development Economics, International Economics and Applied Microeconomics. Dr. De’s current research includes a multi-center study of ethnic differences in the impact of breast cancer on employment status, financial situation, and quality of life.
Tiffany Floyd, PhD
Tiffany Floyd is an assistant professor of psychology at City College. Dr. Floyd’s interests include health disparities in relation to race, culture and socio-economic status, health behavior change, cancer risk and prevention, and cognitive vulnerability to depression. Additional interests include family communication about cancer; attitudes about childhood HPV vaccination among low income mothers; and predictors of adherence to colorectal cancer screening among racially/ethnically diverse women. Dr. Floyd is Co-PI of the Partnership Community Outreach Program (PCOP), a component of the Partnership dedicated to helping communities to take full advantage of the potential for community-academic collaborations to improve public health.
Bingmei Fu, PhD
Bingmei Fu is a professor of biomedical engineering at City College. Some of Dr. Fu’s research interests include molecular, cell and tissue engineering in microcirculation, structural mechanisms of acute increase of microvessel permeability, tumor migration and metastasis in vivo, and regulation of vessel permeability by mechanical, physical and chemical stimuli. Dr. Fu’s current research focuses on measuring the role of specific adhesion and signaling molecules of tumor cells, endothelial cells and the extracellular matrix in tumor metastasis, and hence helps define a new class of targets for the therapeutic drug design for cancer.
Filippo Giancotti, PhD
Filippo Giancotti is head of the cell biology lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Giancotti’s current research focuses on measuring the role of specific adhesion and signaling molecules of tumor cells, endothelial cells and the extracellular matrix in tumor metastasis, and hence helps define a new class of targets for the therapeutic drug design for cancer.
Michael D. Grossberg, PhD
Michael D. Grossberg is an assistant professor of computer science at City College. Dr. Grossberg’s research interest in computer vision includes topics in the geometric and photometric modeling of cameras, and analyzing features for indexing. Dr. Grossberg’s current research focuses on the development and validation of a method of semi-automatic imaging segmentation that will aid the expert user to rapidly and more accurately outline more anatomical structures in computer tomography images.
Jennifer L. Hay, PhD
Jennifer Hay is a clinical health psychologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Hay’s expertise lies in addressing psychological aspects of cancer risk, diagnosis, and treatment. Dr. Hay specializes in the treatment of patients with melanoma, individuals who are at risk for developing melanoma, as well as their families. Dr. Hay’s research interests include evaluating the role of cancer risk perceptions in the adoption of cancer prevention strategies, assessing naturalistic communication about cancer in family settings, and developing and evaluating new ways of communicating cancer risk to average and higher risk individuals. Dr. Hay’s current research intends to extend assessment of the Cancer Risk Beliefs to Spanish and Haitian-Creole speaking participants, and to examine the association of the Cancer Risk Beliefs Scale and patient activation, the extent to which patients actively participate in their own medical care. The project will support a promising academic collaboration and identify cancer communication strategies to enhance behavior change in racial and ethnic minorities, addressing important cancer disparities in prevention and screening behaviors in diverse populations.
Alan N. Houghton, MD
Alan Houghton is a physician-scientist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Houghton’s expertise lies in cancer immunology, the study of the immune system and cancer. Dr. Houghton has a particular focus on understanding and treating melanoma, and has developed novel treatments for this deadly form of skin cancer. Dr. Houghton’s current research focuses on developing and demonstrating the efficacy of a method to computationally design non-immunogenic de novo proteins, using the mouse as a model organism.
Hedvig Hricak, MD, PhD
Hedvig Hricak is chair of the department of radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where he oversees and takes part in radiological practice and research. Dr. Hricak’s primary area of interest is cross-sectional anatomic and molecular imaging of genitourinary cancers. Dr. Hricak’s research involves interdisciplinary collaboration and aims to discover minimally invasive methods for improving cancer detection, treatment planning, and follow-up. Dr. Hricak also co-directs ET CURE, a program that trains young scientists and physicians in oncologic molecular imaging.
Xuejun Jiang, PhD
Xuejun Jiang is a cell biologist who leads the Cell Biology Research Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Jiang’s research interests include programmed cell death. Dr. Jiang’s research surrounds developing a functional throughput apoptotic cell array for anti-cancer drug screening.
Ronald Koder, PhD
Ronald Koder is an assistant professor of physics research at City College. Dr. Koder’s current research focuses on developing and demonstrating the efficacy of a method to computationally design non-immunogenic de novo proteins, using the mouse as a model organism.
Erica Lubetkin, MD, MPH
Erica Lubetkin is an associate medical professor in the Community Health and Social Medicine department at the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at City College. Dr. Lubetkin’s research interests include examining differences in scores of health status and health-related quality of life, both in low-income ethnic/racial minority subgroups and in the general population, and assessing patients' perceptions of risk for specific cancers and other conditions of high morbidity, knowledge of risk for these diseases, and use of preventive services. Dr. Lubetkin’s current research includes the dissemination of patient navigation to reduce racial, ethnic, and poverty-related disparities in tobacco-related morbidity and mortality; building a community-academic partnership and infrastructure to identify and address the needs of the underserved PLWHA at risk for HIV/AIDS-related cancers; and extending assessment of the Cancer Risk Beliefs to Spanish and Haitian-Creole speaking participants, and to examine the association of the Cancer Risk Beliefs Scale and patient activation, the extent to which patients actively participate in their own medical care.
Gikas Mageras, PhD
Dr. Mageras’ current research focuses on the development and validation of a method of semi-automatic imaging segmentation that will aid the expert user to rapidly and more accurately outline more anatomical structures in computer tomography images.
Jamie S. Ostroff, PhD
Jamie Ostroff is a clinical health psychologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Ostroff’s expertise lies in helping patients and their families cope with the challenges of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. Dr. Ostroff is the director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Smoking Cessation Program and works with a team of colleagues dedicated to promoting smoking cessation among cancer patients, their families, and individuals at risk for cancer and other chronic medical conditions. Dr. Ostroff has a strong interest in working with patients who have been diagnosed with tobacco-related cancers. Dr. Ostroff’s current research includes the dissemination of patient navigation to reduce racial, ethnic, and poverty-related disparities in tobacco-related morbidity and mortality
Mark Pezzano, PhD
Mark Pezzano is a molecular biologist at City College. Dr. Pezzano’s research interest includes understanding how the immune system learns to distinguish self from foreign antigens which is critical in understanding immune function and the development of auto immune diseases. The focus of Dr. Pezzano’s current research is to identify thymic epithelial stem cells /progenitors and test the capacity of capacity of grafting of these populations to speed the recovery of thymic epithelial progenitor cells.
Margaret Rosario, PhD
Margaret is a professor in the Psychology department at City College. Dr. Rosario’s research interests surround the psychosocial processes that influence health and adaptational functioning of populations at extreme risk for poor health and identifying factors that influence poor health and intervene between the hypothesized causes and effects. Dr. Rosario’s current research focuses on addressing the impact of gay-related stress on disparities between sexual-minority and heterosexual youths and across sexual-minority youths in cancer-related risk behaviors directly and indirectly by means of psychological distress.
Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Dr. Rosen’s current research focuses on addressing the use of Hsp90 molecular chaperone inhibitors to promote cancer cell death.
Derek Sant’Angelo, PhD
Derek Sant’Angelo is a member of the immunology department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The focus of Dr. Sant’ Angelo’s research is to identify thymic epithelial stem cells /progenitors and test the capacity of capacity of grafting of these populations to speed the recovery of thymic epithelial progenitor cells.
Bhuvanesh Singh, MD, PhD, FACS
Bhuvanesh Singh is surgeon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Singh’s expertise lies in head and neck cancer. The research conducted by Dr. Singh and his lab has helped to establish treatment approaches that serve as cornerstones for modern management of head and neck cancers. Dr. Singh’s current research focuses on the delineation of the specific role of Squamous Cell Carcinoma Related Oncogenes (SCCRO) in neddylation.
Tadmiri Venkatesh, PhD
Tadmiri Venkatesh is a professor in the biology department at City College. Dr. Venkatesh’s research interest includes the genetics and molecular biology of nervous system development and function, focusing on signal transduction mechanisms involved in mitotic regulation during neuronal differentiation and signal cascades in learning and neuronal plasticity. Dr. Venkatesh’s research focuses the delineation of the specific role of Squamous Cell Carcinoma Related Oncogenes (SCCRO) in neddylation.
Sihong Wang, PhD
Sihong Wang is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at City College. Dr Wang’s research interests include cell and tissue engineering and thermal medicine. Her research surrounds developing a functional throughput apoptotic cell array for anti-cancer drug screening.
