December 08, 2025
The University of Kansas Cancer Center announced its 2025 Director’s and Pilot Award recipients during Research Week, an annual event dedicated to showcasing the groundbreaking work of our researchers. These awards honor individuals and teams whose contributions drive innovation, advance cancer care and strengthen our mission. This year’s honorees include recipients of the Director’s Awards, Pilot Awards and Travel Awards each playing an important role in driving progress at the cancer center.
Director’s Award Recipients
Civic Leadership and Philanthropy
Cinelli Family Foundation
Clinical Trial Accrual
Tara Lin, MD, Professor, Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics
Community Clinical Trial Accrual
Ryan Rader, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor, Medical Oncology
Young Scientist
Mark Farrell, PhD, Associate Professor, Medicinal Chemistry
William Jewell Team Science
Biostatistics and Data Science Team, including Matthew Mayo, PhD, Dinesh Pal Mudaranthakam, PhD, Devin Koestler, PhD, and Byron Gajewski, PhD
Closing Disparities
Joseph Hines II, MPH, Senior Director, Research Operations, Director, CAREERS in CLINICAL RESEARCH (C-CLEAR) program
Basic Science
Wen-Xing Ding, PhD, Professor, Pharmacology, Toxicology & Therapeutics
Clinical Science
Tara Lin, MD, Professor, Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics
Outstanding Staff
Christine Thomas, JD, Senior Director, Public Relations, Communications and Strategic Partnerships
Mentoring
Shrikant Anant, PhD, Professor, Cancer Biology
Pilot Project Recipients
Awardees receiving $50,000 in funding.
Bret Freudenthal - DHX36 as a Novel Regulator of Base Excision Repair and Innate Immunity
Mohammad Haeri - Spatially Resolved Identification of Phase-Specific Markers of Mitosis in Brain Tumors Using Integrated Spatial Proteomics and Transcriptomics
Fariba Behbod - Discovery of epigenomic drivers of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) malignant progression to enable precision prevention and therapeutic targeting
Gregory Gan - Development of a recurrent-metastatic head and neck cancer microphysiological system as a step towards precision medicine
Carlo Barnaba – Mechanisms of Autophagy Modulation by Metformin in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Travel Award Recipients
Recipients receive support to attend conferences and/or scientific meetings.
Trainee Speaker Awardees
Cancer Prevention and Control research program: Reagan Henry - Human Ductal Carcinoma in Situ: Mechanism of Early Dissemination and Metastasis.
Drug Discovery, Delivery and Experimental Therapeutics research program: Omar Tinoco - Engineering nanoparticle-drug loaded CAR T-cells to overcome immune suppression in solid tumors
Cancer Biology research program: Allison St. John - Depletion of dominant-negative mutant p53 improves the efficacy of mutant p53 reactivators
PIVOT Speaker Awardees
Cancer Prevention and Control research program: Md Atikur Rahman - Historical Redlining as a Structural Determinant of Breast Cancer Screening: Evidence from a Regional Spatial Analysis
Drug Discovery, Delivery and Experimental Therapeutics research program: Omar Tinoco - Engineering nanoparticle-drug loaded CAR T-cells to overcome immune suppression in solid tumors
Cancer Biology research program: Alec M. Bevis - The autoimmunity-associated minor allele of PTPN22 accelerates NK cell development and augments effector function
Poster Travel Awardees
Student Recipients
1st Place (3-way tie for $1,000 each)
Kaustubh S. Nimkar: Prediction and monitoring of accrual and rate of underrepresented biomedical research group using Bayesian methods
Md Atikur Rahman: Historical Redlining as a Structural Determinant of Breast Cancer Screening: Evidence from a Regional Spatial Analysis
Aditi Rastogi: Elucidating the role of NEAT1_2 in DCIS malignancy
2nd Place ($500)
Jared Sipes: Tracing the early origins of ovarian cancer: The emerging role of extracellular vesicles
3rd Place ($300)
Aprajita Tripathi: NRF2 as a therapeutic target to improve T cell function in muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC)
Trainee Recipients
1st Place ($1,000)
Garrett R. Gibson: Cannabidiol (CBD), Overcomes ONC201 Resistance in H3K27M-Mutant Diffuse Midline Gliomas (DMGs) by Targeting Master Transcription Regulator ID1
2nd Place ($500)
Anika James: Nuclear APC Maintains Colon Homeostasis and Mitigates Inflammation
3rd Place ($300)
Piyanka Hettiarachchi: The critical role of CRK and CRKL in glioblastoma migration and invasion at the cellular level and in the mouse brain
Junior Faculty Recipients
1st Place ($1,000)
Kalyani Pyaram: Tuning T cell immunity through NRF2 modulation: Suppressing Th1/Th17-driven IBD and amplifying CD8⁺ cytotoxicity in solid tumors
2nd Place ($500)
Jacqelyn Nemechek: Unveiling the Function of Chromatin Reader ZMYND8 in Enhancing Anti-Cancer Immunotherapy through PD-L1
3rd Place ($300)
Hindole Ghosh: Ebastine induced inhibition of histaminergic-neurotrophin loop to inhibit pancreatic cancer progression under chronic stress conditions