News & Events

All summer cancer research programs are underway at the University of Illinois Cancer Center on the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) campus, with the start of a program for medical students now in progress.

We're hosting 54 students this summer in programs for high school and undergraduate students, medical students, and another program for undergraduate and postbaccalaureate students, who spend one day each week at UIC. 

Students are mentored throughout the summer by Cancer Center members or UIC faculty who help guide them through the research programs.

The summer programs are a critical part of the mission of the Cancer Center Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) team to build pipeline programs to train cancer researchers from grade school students to early-stage investigators. The goal is to educate, support and retain trainees to address the needs of the Cancer Center’s diverse patient population.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) Cancer Research Internship Program is hosting 11 undergraduate students in a 10-week summer cancer research internship.

The Cancer Health Engagement Summer Scholars (CHESS) program has 17 students in an eight-week summer program that trains and mentors a diverse group of high school students interested in careers focusing on cancer research and other health professions. The CHESS Program is a collaboration between the Cancer Center and the UIC Urban Health Program.

The ResearcHStart program will introduce a group of six diverse high school students to cancer research by immersing them in biophysics, biochemistry, immunology and pharmacology. The program is a multi-institutional program with the Cancer Center, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and Rush University.

The Cancer Center is among the sites for The Robert A. Winn Excellence in Clinical Trials: Clinical Investigator Pathway Program (Winn CIPP), and this year, four medical students from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at UIC are taking part in the six-week summer service-learning externship in community-based clinical research. Winn is a former director of the Cancer Center who now leads the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center in Richmond, Virginia.

The Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative Fellows Program (Chicago CHEC) is a program for undergraduate and postbaccalaureate students at Northeastern Illinois University, UIC, Northwestern University, the City Colleges of Chicago and other Community/ Junior Colleges in the Chicago metropolitan area who are planning to apply to graduate or medical school. A group of 20 Fellows will spend one day each week at UIC. Fellows spend the summer in seminars, workshops, and research lectures learning from leading researchers.

There are more than 30 mentors for Cancer Center summer program students this year: Yamilé Molina, PhD; Marta Markiewicz-Potoczny, PhD; Lobna Elkhadragy, PhD; Matías E. Sánchez, MD; Ameen Salahudeen, MD, PhD; Sage Kim, PhD; Marian Fitzgibbon, PhD; Yulia Komarova, PhD; Vadim Gaponenko, PhD; Joanna Burdette, PhD; Jose Villegas, PhD; Steve Seung-Young Lee, PhD; Jimmy Orjala, PhD; Jonathan Coloff, PhD; Abeer Mahmoud, MD, PhD; Douglas Thomas, PhD; Paul Grippo, PhD; Larisa Nonn, PhD; Abhery Das, PhD; Garth Rauscher, PhD; Saria Lofton, PhD; Jean M. Reading, PhD; Duncan Wardrop, PhD; Shilpa Sant, PhD; Andre Kajdacsy-Balla, MD, PhD; Andrew McLeod, PhD, MS, RD; Zongmin Zhao, PhD; Kadur Lakshminarasimha Murthy, PhD; Jan Kitajewski, PhD; Michael Heiferman, MD; David Tofovic, MD; and Ryan Nguyen, DO.