News & Events

Left to right: Lakshmi Kadkol, Kate Klein and Adriana Duraki

The University of Illinois Cancer Center has awarded three Spring Travel Awards to pre-doctoral student trainees mentored by Cancer Center members at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC): Lakshmi Kadkol, Kate Klein and Adriana Duraki.

Each will receive $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.

Lakshmi Kadkol, from the College of Medicine, will present the abstract, “Modeling late-stage ovarian cancer and validating oncolytic adenoviral tools for transgene expression and tumor monitoring” at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, on April 17-22. She is mentored by Cancer Center Deputy Director VK Gadi, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist who cares for patients with cancer at UI Health, the academic health system at UIC, which includes the Cancer Center.

Kate Klein, from the School of Public Health, will present the abstract, “Implementation Science Research to Understand the Readiness of a Mobile Clinic Intervention to Screen for High-Risk HPV Infections and Associated Morbidity in Mali and Nigeria,” at Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C., on April 10-12. She is mentored by School of Public Health Research Associate Professor Caryn Peterson, PhD, MS, a member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at the Cancer Center.

Adriana Duraki, from the College of Medicine, will present the abstract, “Vitamin D Deficiency Leads to a Proinflammatory Microenvironment in the Prostate that Supports Carcinogenesis, ” at the Vitamin D Workshop 2026 in Strasbourg, France, on June 30 to July 3. She is mentored by Larisa Nonn, PhD, co-leader of the Cancer Center’s Prostate Cancer Working Group, a Professor of Pathology in the College of Medicine, and the Cancer Center’s Associate Director for Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination.

The Cancer Center offers Trainee Travel Awards annually in the spring and fall.