Each year the Professional Development Core selects qualified Scholars into the program. The Roadmap Scholars are junior faculty members whose goals are to become sustainable independent researchers. This year, in addition to a submitted application, Scholars were interviewed by all three Co-Directors and the Research Navigator. Please join us in welcoming the 14th Cohort of Roadmap Scholars: Dicle Yalcin, PhD (LSUH-New Orleans), Stephanie Waldrop, MD (Pennington Biomedical), and Van Barnes, PhD (Tulane).

All three Scholars began on July 1st and have enrolled in the Masters of Science in Clinical Research program. Dr. Yalcin's project is titled "Multi-Scale Immune-System Modeling of Kaposi Sarcoma Treatment Outcomes" and her work focuses on discovering diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers and modeling mechanisms of variation in treatment responses using machine learning and systems biology approaches. Dr. Waldrop's project is titled "Predicting body composition, changes in BMI-z score, and clinical obesity risk in adolescents" and will identify and assess the most optimal nutritional strategies for children at high risk of obesity and associated comorbidities in the context of their interaction with genetic predisposition, susceptibility conferred via intrauterine exposures, and effects on infant and child growth. Dr. Barnes’s project is titled "Targeting MAP3K19 signaling in novel patient-derived lung cancer models to address health disparities" and she will leverage her expertise in tumor model development and characterization of kinase signaling networks in cancer progression, specifically mantle cell lymphoma, breast cancer, and lung cancer.. 

For further detail about each Scholar's project, please visit the following link on the Professional Development Core website: Roadmap Scholars Projects