The University of Illinois Cancer Center has awarded its Spring 2025 Trainee Travel Awards to Postdoctoral Trainee Andrew McLeod, PhD, MS, RD, Medical Student Haley Hultquist and Predoctoral Student Philippa Burns.
The Cancer Center annually funds two rounds of Travel Awards in the Spring and Fall. Students, postdoctoral fellows and clinical residents/fellows engaged in cancer-related research and mentored by faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago are eligible.
Each awardee receives $500 to offset the cost of travel and registration to present their cancer-related work at conferences, which are valuable opportunities for young scientists to share their work and to network with other scientists.
More About the Awardees
McLeod, who is in the UIC School of Public Health, presented his abstract, “Neuropsychological Assessment of Older African American Adult Cancer Survivors and Controls,” at the International Cognition and Cancer Task Force in Caen, France. His mentor is Cancer Center Member and Associate Director for Population Sciences Marian L. Fitzgibbon, PhD. Fitzgibbon is also Co-Director of the Cancer Health Equity and Career Development Program (CHECDP) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), which McLeod completed the CHECDP and earned a K99/R00 Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute.
Hultquist, a third-year student in the University of Illinois College of Medicine at UIC, will present her abstract, “The Effect of Patient Uncertainty in Family History on Genetic Testing Recommendations for Hereditary Cancer Syndromes,” at the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) Annual Clinical Genetics Meeting in Los Angeles. Her mentor is Tara Maga, PhD, MS CGC, a Genetic Counselor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UI Health. As an M3 medical student, Hultquist plans to complete her residency in Internal Medicine and then a fellowship in Oncology.
Burns, who is in the College of Medicine Department of Physiology and Biophysics, will present her abstract, “Serine starvation inhibits SRSF protein expression and modulates RNA splicing,” at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Annual Meeting 2025 in Chicago. Her mentor is Cancer Center Member Jonathan Coloff, PhD, Co-lead of the Cancer Center’s Cancer Biology Research Program and Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.
To be considered, Travel Award applicants should complete the Cancer Center Trainee Membership form if they have not done so in the past, and they must have proof of submission of an abstract for an oral or poster presentation at a conference or scientific meeting.