News and Congratulations
Master's Degree Candidate, Dr. Praj Rajappa, was invited by Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, Chair of Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital, and American Association for Cancer Research AACR President-Elect to at the Institute for Genomic Medicine on September 14th at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
Rajappa is the director of an integrated precision medicine program that leverages next generation sequencing platforms as an addition to the standard of care for pediatric brain tumor patients. He is currently a Fellow in Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Working in close collaboration with Olivier Elemento, PhD, and the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, Rajappa has started to define personalized sequencing algorithms to genomically characterize pediatric brain tumors and translate these findings to the bedside and facilitate clinical trial enrollment. To that end, Rajappa is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Clinical Translational Investigation at the Weill Cornell Clinical Translational Science Center. As a result of his efforts, every pediatric brain tumor patient is now routinely consulted with and offered genomic analyses at Weill Cornell Brain and Spine. As a physician-scientist, Rajappa’s career research interests converge on utilizing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to comprehensively define the brain tumor microenvironment while also continuing to develop a robust precision medicine service that is routinely integrated into standard of care for the brain tumor population.
His current research focus is in integrating a personalized approach for pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors. His mentors are Jeffrey P Greenfield, MD, PhD, Neurosurgery, Weill Cornell Medicine; David Phillip Hajjar, PhD, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine; and Jackie Bromberg, MD, PhD, Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The Master's Degree in Clinical Translational Investigation combines rigorous academics and strategic, practical skills, challenging students to apply scientific theory, concepts, methods, and innovative, team-oriented management to help solve complex biomedical and health issues.