February 2025 EIPM Director's Memo
Dear Members of the Englander Institute,
I'm thrilled to announce that our colleague Dr. Ekta Khurana has earned a 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers. The Cornell Chronicle and many other news outlets covered this Award, which was earned by a total of six Cornell faculty members.
I hope you enjoy reading about our recent departmental accomplishments, including news media coverage of our work, participation in major conferences & meetings, and impressive publications by a range of EIPM colleagues.
Thank you again for your continued hard work and dedication to our mission.
Sincerely,
Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
News Coverage & Awards 
Chief Research Officer Dr. Bishoy M. Faltas provided UroToday Expert Commentary "Outcomes of Bladder-Preserving Radiation Therapy in Locally Advanced MIBC," on January 9th, and "Diagnostic Accuracy of VI-RADS for Determining Muscle Invasion," on January 15th.
Our colleague Dr. Scott Tagawa was interviewed by Urology Times on January 7th for an article exploring "The mechanism of action for 177Lu-TLX591 in mCRPC." 
Our colleague Dr. Lisa Newman was interviewed for the article, "One Surgeon’s Spirit and Brilliance Lift a Whole Community. A childhood dream became a reality for Montana native Dr. Kelly K. Hunt, who has changed the face of the surgical breast oncology workforce," which appeared in OncLive on January 3rd. 
Dr. Niroshana Anandasabapathybecame an elected member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) on January 10th and will be officially inducted into the Society at the ASCI Dinner and New Member Induction Ceremony, April 25, as part of the AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting, April 25–27, at the Swissotel Chicago.
Events
We thank Dr. John-William Sidhom, WCM Clinical Fellow in Hematology and Medical Oncology, for presenting an AI Working Group talk “Learning the Language of Somatic Mutations: An LLM Model Approach to Precision Oncology,” on January 17th. 
Our colleague Dr. Ashley Laughney presented the Institute for Computational Biomedicine Research in Progress Seminar “Mapping the emergent functions of STING in cancer,” on Jan. 16th.
On January 16th our colleague Bhavneet Bhinder presented an EIPM Journal Club paper "Lung adenocarcinoma promotion by air pollutants," published in Nature on April 05, 2023.
Publications
"Developing a Predictive Model for Metastatic Potential in Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor," was published in the January 2025 edition of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism by our colleagues Drs. Yajas Shah, Scott Kulm, and Director Olivier Elemento, with WCM colleagues. 
"Evaluation of ChatGPT as a Reliable Source of Medical Information on Prostate Cancer for Patients: Global Comparative Survey of Medical Oncologists and Urologists," was published in the January 2025 edition of Urology Practice by our Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg with Dr. Andrea Sboner from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM, with colleagues. 
"IRE1α–XBP1 safeguards hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells by restricting pro-leukemogenic gene programs," was published in Nature Immunology on January 9th by our former colleague Dr. Akanksha Verma and Director Olivier Elemento, PhD. 
"Consuming a modified Mediterranean ketogenic diet reverses the peripheral lipid signature of Alzheimer’s disease in humans," was published in Communications Medicine on January 9th by Drs. Richa Batra, Annalise Schweickart, and Jan Krumsiek.
"Functional genomics pipeline identifies CRL4 inhibition for the treatment of ovarian cancer," was published in Clinical and Translational Medicine on January 22nd by Dr. Benjamin D. Hopkins with EIPM colleagues Sally E Claridge, Shalini Nath, Lamberto De Boni, Eda Nur Kozan, Director Olivier Elemento, and Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine & the EIPM.
Alexandros Sigaras, Sandhya Sriram, and Jordan Zimm, with WCM colleagues, published the medRxiv preprint, "AIRWAY-XR: Augmented Instruction to Refine Wayfinding and Yielding Skills in Emergency Medicine Residents for Intubation using Mixed Reality Technology," on January 6th. 
Dr. Dan Landau and colleagues published "Single-cell mapping of regulatory DNA:Protein interactions," in bioRxiv on January 2nd. 
The Research Article "Exome sequencing reveals a sparse genomic landscape in Kaposi sarcoma," was published in Molecular Cancer Research on January 30th by Dr. Ethel Cesarman from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department along with Bhavneet Binder and Director Olivier Elemento, PhD.
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