Postdoctoral researcher Sohyeon Park, PhD has been selected as a , receiving a three-year, $240,000 award to pursue innovative cancer research at UCLA.
Dr. Park is among five exceptional early-career scientists in the new cohort of Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellows. Her proposal catalyzed a new collaboration between her primary mentor Alexander Hoffmann, PhD, a systems immunologist, and Frank Alber, PhD, a chromosome structure expert. Both are faculty in , and the . Dr. Hoffmann is also a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Park’s research proposal focuses on understanding "macrophage memory:" how these crucial immune cells retain information from previous encounters that can influence whether they fight tumors or protect them.
Using cutting-edge experimental and computational approaches including machine learning-aided genome modeling and deep learning-based image analysis, Dr. Park will investigate how exposure to certain stimuli creates lasting changes in macrophage chromosome structure. Her work aims to uncover the mechanisms behind macrophage memory formation, potentially laying the groundwork for strategies to reprogram these cells to enhance anti-tumor immunity.
The Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship program was created to encourage quantitative scientists from fields like mathematics, physics, and computer science to pursue careers in cancer research, recognizing the critical importance of computational approaches in precision medicine.
