Congratulations to these Immunology Program students for their accomplishments during the 2022-2023 Academic Year:

• Ben Whitfield (Advisor: Jason Huse): Recipient of the Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Scholarship
• Spencer Lea (Advisor: Michael Curran): Recipient of Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Scholarship
• Jielin Liu (Advisor: Padmanee Sharma): Recipient of Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Scholarship
• Ye Li (Advisor: Katy Rezvani): Recipient of T.C. Hsu Memorial Scholarship
• Swetha Anandhan (Advisor: Padmanee Sharma): Cancer Answers/Sylvan Rodriguez Scholarship

Cheryl Jiang 

Advisor: Dr. Katy Rezvani 

Michael Clowers 

Advisor: Seyed Javad Moghaddam 

Congratulations to these Immunology Program students on receiving fellowship grants for the 2023-2024 Academic Year:

• Akash Boda (Advisor: Michael Curran): Recipient of Schissler Foundation Fellowship
• Hao-Nien Chen (Advisor: Dihua Yu): Recipient of Rosalie B. Hite Fellowship 
• Heather Sonnemann (Advisor: Greg Lizee) Recipient of American Legion Auxiliary in Cancer Research 
• Anik Banerjee (Advisor: Louise McCullough) Recipient of John and Rebekah Harper Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences  

GSBS Immunology program will invite MD Anderson and UTHealth faculty researchers from the field of Immunology, and other related fields, to present his/her relevant research. The faculty seminar is open to all Immunology program students and faculty. Due to current COVID-19 restrictions, meetings will be held over Zoom for the foreseeable future. For more information regarding the Faculty Seminar Series, please contact Akash Boda, Anu Srinivasamani, or Yimo Sun. 

The Forefront of Immunology Seminar Series is an extension of the Faculty Seminar Series that features lectures from external speakers who have done seminal work in the field. The goal of the series is to introduce Program students, postdocs, and faculty to the cutting-edge and current work being done in the field of Immunology while allowing opportunities to network and interact with faculty across institutions. 

The Forefront in Immunology Seminar Series will occur at least four months out of the academic year. Due to current COVID-19 restrictions, meetings will take place over Zoom for the foreseeable future. The virtual meetings will include a research talk with time for Q&A, followed by a breakout session with the speaker and a few interested Program students. For more information regarding the Forefront of Immunology Seminar Series, please contact Akash Boda, Anu Srinivasamani, or Yimo Sun. 

Each year the Immunology Program sponsors a student-organized research retreat, which includes student talks, poster sessions, and a keynote speaker. The retreat is considered to be valuable time away from the laboratory allowing students and faculty to become better acquainted with each other.

Students are encouraged to attend cancer immunology-related seminars offered by the Center for Cancer Immunology Research (CCIR) and the Center for Inflammation and Cancer (CIC); both Centers are based at MD Anderson and specializing in translational immunology research.  The seminars are wonderful opportunities for students to learn about research led by accomplished scientists.  The CCIR also holds seminars in which students, postdoctoral fellows and PhD-level research staff give talks about their projects, and in return they receive feedback regarding presentation style, experimental design and interpretation of results from faculty.  To be added to the mailing lists for future seminars contact Lauren Porter and specify one or all of the seminar series.

An annual retreat is organized by Program students who develop retreat sessions and invite a nationally renowned scientist to present at the plenary talk. All the students in the Program present their research either in a poster or oral presentation to Program faculty.

2022 Committee Members:
o Yating Li
o Brittany Morrow
o Rishika Prasad
o Drew Boagni
o Avantika Krishna
o Dr. Jagan Sastry, Faculty Advisor
o Dr. Roza Nurieva, Faculty Advisor

Primary oversight of media related to the Immunology Program is provided by the Media Committee. Chief activities include maintaining the content on the Program website, as well as publicizing relevant information via social media platforms to help attract high-quality students and faculty to the Immunology community. 

2022 Committee Members:
o Yangxi Zheng
o Cheryl Jiang
o Sumedha Pareek
o Pragya Sinha
o Dr. Cassian Yee, Faculty Advisor

The Faculty Seminar Committee is responsible for organizing seminar series consisting of Immunology Program Faculty presenters. The committee also invites and hosts exceptional outside speakers relevant to the research interests of the Program. Seminar speakers are selected for their relevance in the field of immunology (tumor immunology, checkpoint blockade, GVHD/GVL, infectious disease, inflammation, autoimmunity, etc.).

2022 Committee Members:
o Akash Boda
o Sarah Schneider
o Yimo Sun
o Dr. Matthew Gubin, Faculty Advisor

The Student Recruitment Committee organizes all Program recruitment activities in an effort to attract first year GSBS students to the Program.

2022 Committee Members:
o Meredith Frank
o Spencer Lea
o Sara Murphy
o Michelle Winkler
o Dr. Seyed Moghadddam, Faculty Advisor
o Dr. Momoko Yoshimoto, Faculty Advisor