Assistant Professor
University of Florida
My research focus lies in understanding the adoptive resistance mechanisms that enable tumor immune evasion in pediatric cancer, investigating how we can overcome these challenges with targeted immunotherapy, and advancing novel immunotherapeutics to the clinic with rationally-designed clinical trials.
I completed medical school at Baylor College of Medicine and my Pediatrics Residency at the University of Texas Southwestern. I then undertook my pediatric hematology/oncology training at the Johns Hopkins University/National Cancer Institute combined fellowship program with laboratory training under the mentorship of Dr. Drew Pardoll, followed by a senior Pediatric Immunotherapy fellowship at the National Cancer Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Nirali Shah. I gained experience in clinical trial design and toxicity management of novel immunotherapies, with a specific focus on cell therapy.
As the Associate Director of the Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Initiative (PCI2) at the University of Florida, I serve as a bridge to facilitate the translation of novel immunotherapies into early phase investigator-initiated clinical trials for children with solid tumors and CNS malignancies. I am the PI on several investigator-initiated cellular therapy trials (NCT06514898, NCT04837547) and clinical trials for mRNA-based vaccines (NCT04573140, NCT05660408). Given my basic science background in tumor microenvironment and my formal training and involvement in design and conduct of early phase clinical trials, I am ideally positioned to advance the translational research at the University of Florida.
