New York, NY — The Cancer Research Institute (CRI) announced today the Spring 2025 Class of CRI Irvington and Immuno-Informatics Postdoctoral Fellows, making investments in 25 promising postdoctoral fellowship trainees whose research spans tumor immunology, cancer prevention, data science, and cellular engineering.
A new class of visionaries, backed by CRI’s urgent commitment to keep progress moving forward.
This cohort marks the first selected since CRI pledged an emergency $2.5 million to fund an additional 10 postdoctoral fellowships over the next year—part of a bold response to mounting uncertainty in federal research funding. In a further show of support, CRI also offered all its current fellows in their final year of funding a six-month extension to help ensure continuity and stability during this turbulent time.
“Postdocs are the invisible engine of biomedical discovery,” said Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, of CRI’s Fellowship Review Committee and Scientific Advisory Council. “At a time when federal support is faltering, CRI is once again stepping up—just as it did decades ago when cancer immunology had few champions. Supporting these young scientists is not just an act of resilience; it’s a commitment to the future of science and the patients who depend on it.”
Each CRI fellowship provides $243,000 over three years and supports high-impact research at leading academic institutions across the United States, Canada, Israel, and Europe.
The Spring 2025 class includes:
CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellows
- Hiroyasu Aoki, PhD — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
- Manish Ayushman, PhD — University of California, San Francisco
- Pilar Baldominos Flores, PhD — Harvard Medical School
- Gbolahan Bamgbose, PhD — Huntsman Cancer Institute
- Ondrej Belan, PhD — Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Anton Dobrin, PhD — Sunnybrook Research Institute
- Zachary Earley, PhD — University of California, San Francisco
- Samantha Fernandez, PhD — Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
- Jesse Garcia Castillo, PhD — University of California, San Francisco
- Amina Jbara, PhD — Stanford University
- Zhixin Jing, PhD — National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
- Katherine Lindblad, PhD — Boston Children’s Hospital
- Andrew MacLean, PhD — The Rockefeller University (Carson Family Charitable Trust Fellow)
- Shannon McGettigan, PhD — University of Pennsylvania
- Tara Muijlwijk, PhD — NYU Grossman School of Medicine
- Fiona Raso, PhD — NYU Grossman School of Medicine
- Kristen Witt, PhD — University of Washington
- Kai Xu, PhD — Boston Children’s Hospital
“Postdocs are the invisible engine of biomedical discovery.”
Miriam Merad, MD, PhD
CRI Scientific Advisory Council
CRI Immuno-Informatics Postdoctoral Fellows
- Samira Ghazali, PhD — Harvard Medical School
- Linglin Huang, PhD — Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Rongting Huang, PhD — Stanford University
- Tyler Park, PhD — Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Maryam Pourmaleki, PhD — Stanford University
- Rajat Punia, PhD — Cornell University
- Anna Ralser, MD, PhD — Gladstone Institutes
“Our investment is both a promise kept and a reaffirmation of CRI’s mission,” said Alicia Zhou, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of CRI. “These are the scientists who will shape the future of cancer treatment. We’re proud to stand behind them—not just with words, but with real resources that allow bold scientific exploration to be done. ”
From a single bold idea in 1971 to a global network of more than 1,600 fellows, CRI’s support for early-career scientists has helped turn immunotherapy from a fringe concept into a front-line cancer treatment. Today’s fellows are not just continuing that legacy—they’re redefining what’s possible.
