9 Young Scientists to Watch: the Timmerman Traverse Fellows at Damon Runyon

Our community’s steadfast support of science is more important than ever given the tenuous state of federal research funding.

Teams of biotech executives and investors have raised $3.9 million for high-risk/high-reward cancer research since 2024 as part of the Timmerman Traverse for Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. The Traverse has created fun outdoor experiences and lasting friendships. We’ve hit the trails to Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp, Mt. Katahdin in Maine, and the High Sierras of California.

Most of all, we’re propelling the scientific careers of nine young scientists around the US. These resources give these brilliant young people the freedom to think big and move their fields forward.

See the list below for short descriptions of who the Timmerman Traverse Fellows are and what they are doing.

 

Tamar “Tata” Kavlashvili. Tata is a postdoctoral fellow studying mitochondrial DNA at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She’s looking at how common mitochondrial deletions contribute to mitochondrial disorders and cancer. Her latest research was published July 17 in BioRxiv.

 

 

Shaohua Zhang. Shaohua is a postdoctoral fellow engineering T cells with synthetic cell adhesion molecules at UC San Francisco. The hope is that synCAMs will make it harder for tumor cells to escape from engineered CAR-T cells. This fundamental work could be applied toward other cell therapies that modify macrophages, Natural Killer cells, and T-regulatory cells.

 

 

Dr. Lachelle Weeks. Dr. Weeks is a physician-scientist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She is looking for telltale signs in blood samples that can help doctors predict when a patient is likely to develop acute myeloid leukemia – a notoriously tough-to-treat cancer. Dr. Weeks discussed the work on The Long Run podcast in September 2025.

 

 

Antonio LaPorte. Antonio is a postdoctoral researcher in organic chemistry at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. He’s leveraging new techniques to synthesize sulfated sugars so it’s easier to study how those cell surface molecules interact with, and facilitate, how cancer cells grow and spread.

 

 

Natasha O’Brown. Natasha is an assistant professor in cell biology and immunology at Rutgers University  in New Jersey. Her project uses zebrafish as a model organism to test methods to make it easier for small molecules to temporarily cross the blood-brain barrier, opening up new possibilities for the treatment of glioblastoma.

 

 

Stephanie Gaglione. Stephanie is a postdoctoral researcher at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. She’s using technologies to comprehensively profile the antigens displayed by virally-driven cancers, with a focus on targets that provoke an immune system response.The hope is to find new targets for T cell immunotherapies and cancer vaccines.

 

 

Angelos Pistofidis. Angelos is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. His research is focused on transcription termination factor 2 (TTF2) as a potential target for new cancer drugs.

 

 

Shihui Chen. Shihui is a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif. She’s looking at how developmental pathways can be hijacked during cancer initiation and progression. She’s using mouse embryos as a model system to look specifically at CARM1, a regulator that controls gene expression programs that drive cell fate.

 

 

Bailey Schultz. Bailey is a postdoctoral researcher at The Rockefeller University in New York. He’s studying the relationship between tuberculosis and cancer, using genome-wide CRISPR-based approaches to identify and study genes that regulate mycobacterial cell growth and division.

 

 

Two more scientists will be named to this group by the end of 2026.

You can contribute directly to their research here at the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. 

Let’s invest in basic research and keep the foundation of the industry on solid ground.