In a light-filled office, two young physician-scientists study how cancer forms, spreads, and recurs after remission. They meet once or twice a week where—amid leftover take-out containers and white-boarded walls—they write code, work through complex problems, and share recent triumphs and challenges.

The researchers—Marcin Imielinski, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of computational genomics, and Dan Avi Landau, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicine and of physiology and...