Co-Mentors and Their Research

Daniel Addison, MD. Focus: Therapy-related cardiovascular disease among cancer survivors, and a URM (dry lab researcher). Dr. Addison is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Disease (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. As a physician-scientist, he studies cardiotoxicity of radiation and systemic therapy. Dr. Addison is currently funded to study the early detection and mechanisms for cancer immunotherapy associated cardiotoxicity (K23HL155890).

 

 

Theodore Brasky, PhD. Focus: Tobacco cessation and inflammation as a cause of cancer (dry lab researcher). Dr. Brasky is an Assistant Professor in th Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. As an epidemiologist, he studies how anti-inflammatory medications and nutrients e.g., long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. affect cancer risk and survival. Separately, he is NCI funded to study the impact of electronic cigarettes on surgery outcomes in patients with lung cancer (K07CA215546).

 

 

Kristen Hoskinson, PhD. Focus: Cognitive and social consequences of pediatric brain tumors. Dr. Hoskinson is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (College of Medicine), and is a practicing neuropsychologist at NCH. She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Dr. Hoskinson’s research interests include the neurocognitive and psychosocial comorbidities of childhood brain cancer. Her current research uses neuroimaging to study cognitive and social difficulties faced by long term survivors of pediatric brain tumor and children with post-traumatic brain injury. This work is funded by the American Cancer Society (RSG-22-032-01-CSCT).

 

 

Leena Nahata, MD. Focus: Reproductive health of young cancer survivors (dry lab researcher). Dr. Nahata Is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics (College of Medicine), and a practicing endocrinologist at the NCH. She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Her research program examines reproductive and psychosocial outcomes in pediatric populations at risk for infertility. She contributes to fertility guidelines through multiple national and international organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatric Initiative Network of the Oncofertility Consortium, Children’s Oncology Group, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Dr. Nahata is currently funded to develop a family-centered intervention for optimizing fertility preservation and decision quality in male adolescent and young adults with cancer (K08CA237338, in no-cost extension).

 

Julianna Nemeth, PhD. Focus: Tobacco cessation among homeless youth. Dr. Nemeth is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion (College of Public Health). She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Dr. Nemeth is an intervention scientist who assesses health disparities among women and children. She is currently funded to develop contextually tailored and optimized smoking cessation intervention for youth who are experiencing homeless (K07CA21632).

 

 

 

Timiya Nolan, PhD. Focus: Cancer survivorship health disparities in cancer survivorship, and a URM. Dr. Nolan is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing. She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program and a nursing scientist who studies health disparities by developing interventions that promote self-management in the prevention and control of cancer, especially breast cancer. She just received the Victoria Mock New Investigator Award from the Oncology Nursing Society. Dr. Nolan is currently NCI funded to study quality of life intervention for young African American Breast Cancer Survivors in treatment (K08CA245209 and R03CA245999).

 

 

Jesse Plascak, PhD. Health disparities, social environmental factors and biological consequences of cancer. Dr. Plascak is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Cancer Prevention (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Dr. Plascak seeks to better understand cancer disparities in race, ethnicity, geography and other social factors in order to inform feasible practices and policies that can lead to greater health equity. He is currently funded to study social environmental factors, DNA methylation of inflammation genes for breast cancer survivorship among African American women (K07CA222158). He recently received a fundable impact score for an NCI R01.

 

 

Carolyn Presley, MD. Focus: Geriatric care interventions for lung cancer patients affecting quality of life and outcomes. Dr. Presley is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. As a lung medical oncologist and a geriatrician, her research focuses on optimizing patients’ functional status and minimizing treatment burdens for older adults with lung cancer using geriatric assessment-directed interventions, integrated oncopalliative care delivery models and patient-reported, universal health outcomes. Dr. Presley is currently funded to develop an intervention for enhancing resiliency among older lung cancer patients receiving therapy (K76AG074923).

 

 

 

Ce Shang, PhD. Focus: Behavioral economics, tobacco use and tobacco regulatory science (dry-lab researcher). Dr. Shang is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Dr. Shang is a behavioral health economist who evaluates the effectiveness of policies regulating tobacco and alcohol. In these studies, she has integrated preference research, behavioral economics and statistical modeling to investigate cancer-causing behaviors and the impact of regulations on these behaviors. Dr. Shang is currently funded to study the impact of taxing electronic cigarette use (R00AA024810).

 

 

Micah Skeens, PhD, MS, BSN. Focus: Using digital health technologies to improve caregiver (parents) support for children. Dr. Skeens is an Assistant Professor in the department of Pediatrics (College of Medicine), and is a practicing nurse practitioner at NCH. She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Her research investigates innovative, fun approaches to improving symptom assessment and self-management for children with cancer, and with attention to the needs of rural and Appalachian communities, which are underserved. She is currently funded to improve adherence through mHealth for pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients (R00 NR019115).

 

 

Min-Ae Song, PhD. Focus: Tobacco use behaviors, biological consequences, and cancer risk (wet-lab researcher). Dr. Song is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences (College of Public Health). She is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. Her research interests focuses on multi-omics to integrate environmental/lifestyle factors, epigenetics, genetics, and biomarkers of exposure to understand how differences among genes and environments aid to identify biomarkers of effects and ultimately control and prevent disease. Dr. Song is currently funded to study mitochondrial alterations related to use of electronic cigarettes (R21HL147401), and she was recently notified of a grant for a KL2 Individualized Development award.

 

Daniel Spakowicz, PhD. Focus: Microbiome for lung cancer risk and outcomes (wet-lab researcher). Dr. Spakowicz is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program. His research interest is the immunomodulatory effects of microbes on cancer outcomes. He has a career development award to study the effects of the microbiome and diet in older adults with lung cancer on treatment outcomes (K01AG070310).

Daniel Stover, MD. Focus: Interventions and decision making for tumor genomic testing (dry and wet-lab researcher). Dr. Stover is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Cancer Control Program. As a physician-scientist, he studies tumor genomic profiling and patient characteristics for treatment outcomes in order to identify predictive markers for treatment response. He is currently funded to develop video interventions to enhance patient education for tumor genomic testing (R21CA259985).

Fred Tabung, PhD. Focus: Diet and lifestyle affecting the microbiome for cancer risk and survival and is a URM (dry-lab researcher). Dr. Tabung is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology (College of Medicine). He is a member of the OSUCCC Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program. Dr. Tabung’s research integrates novel dietary patterns, biomarkers (inflammation and insulin response), metabolomics and microbiome data to comprehensively investigate pathways linking dietary patterns and cancer outcomes. His current funding is to study the above for colorectal cancer risk (R00CA207736).

Biostatistical/Bioinformatics Collaborators

The following biostatisticians and bioinformaticians have agreed to serve on mentoring committees as advisors, and serve as navigators to assist fellows in their research

Kellie Archer, PhD. Focus: Genomic biostatistics, data mining, statistical learning, statistical computing, applications of statistical methods to high-throughput genomic data including next-generation sequencing data. Dr. Archer is Professor and Chair of the Division of Biostatistics (College of Public Health). Her research area has been in the development of statistical methods and software for analyzing data arising from high-throughput genomic experiments, while her collaborative research pertains to the application of statistical methods in the analysis of high-throughput genomic data. Dr. Archer is currently funded to develop mixture cure models for identifying genomic features associated with outcome in acute myeloid leukemia (R01LM013879).

 

Soledad Fernandez, PhD. Focus: Statistical genetics. Dr. Fernandez is Professor and vice-Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (College of Medicine). She is the Director of the OSUCCC Biostatistical Shared Resource (P30CA016058), and is regularly a core director for multi-programmatic grants (P01CA163205). In her role, she oversees a group of 30+ biostatisticians and bioinformaticians. Dr. Fernandez’ area of expertise includes statistical genetics, feature selection methods and design of experiments for laboratory and clinical studies. In addition to being a collaborator on mentoring committees, she can navigate the fellows to other mentors.

 

 

Lang Li, PhD. Focus: Drug interaction, precision medicine, data mining, and text mining. Dr. Li is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (College of Medicine). Dr. Liuses translational biomedical informatics approaches to predict drug responses and investigate drug interaction mechanisms. His lab employs both population data (i.e., medical records, claims data, and patient case reporting system) and omics profiling data to predict drug efficacy and adverse drug events. Dr. Li is currently funded to develop informatics pipelines for Phase 1 trials (U01CA248240) and to develop methods to study drug-drug interactions (R01AG025152). In addition to being a collaborator on mentoring committees, he can navigate the fellows to other mentors.

 

Maciej Pietrzak, PhD. Focus: Bioinformatics for molecular biology research and computational biology. Dr. Pietrzak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (College of Medicine). He is the Technical Director of the OSUCCC Biomedical Informatics Shared Resource. His work in computational biology and bioinformatics fields is focused on applying computational methods and novel mathematical approaches to address systems biology and functional genomics questions.

 

 

Michael Pennell, PhD. Focus: design and analysis of group randomized trials for cancer-screening interventions, survival analysis, joint modeling of cancer outcomes. Dr. Pennell is an Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics (College of Public Health). Dr. Pennell’s research interests include nonparametric Bayes, first hitting time models for survival analysis, design and analysis of group randomized trials, joint modeling outcomes of different scales, and statistical methods in toxicological risk assessment.