Nikita Katila, PhD
Mentor: Billy Loo, MD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 2/1/2026 - 1/31/2028

Nikita is a postdoctoral researcher at Center for Clinical Sciences Research (CCSR), in the Department of Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine at Stanford University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Pokhara University, Nepal in 2012 and graduated with master’s (2016) and PhD (2019) from Yeungnam University, under Dr. Dong Young Choi who specialized in Parkinson’s disease research. In 2023, she joined the FLASH Sciences lab at Stanford University (Loo lab), where she is leading the core experiments for the NIH Program Project Grant with the collaborators from University of California, Irvine (UCI), focused on investigating the advantageous therapeutic index of FLASH radiotherapy for brain malignancies and investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the effectiveness of FLASH irradiation in brain radiotherapy. She is also working on a collaborative project with James lab at the Department of Radiology, Stanford University using PET imaging to track the acute and long-term neuroinflammation progression in preclinical mouse models of whole brain irradiation.

Marian Awadalla, PhD
Mentors: Kathy Ferrara, PhD and Andrei Iagaru, MD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 9/1/2025 - 8/31/2027

Marian is a postdoctoral researcher in the Molecular Imaging Program (MIPS), Department of Radiology, School of Medicine at Stanford University, where she is developing novel AI-driven theragnostic probes for cancer imaging and treatment. Before joining Stanford, she worked with the radiochemistry and cyclotron team at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. There, she developed an ¹⁸F-glucose-based radiotracer that demonstrated superior PET imaging performance compared to FDG-PET in certain cancers. She also contributed to small-molecule and peptide-based imaging projects targeting neuroendocrine prostate cancer, and advanced immunoPET research by developing and validating ⁸⁹Zr-labeled antibodies, which showed promising preclinical results with potential for clinical translation in bladder cancer patients. She began her academic journey after graduating from the College of Science in Egypt, where she ranked among the top graduates and was nominated to join the National Research Center. There, she pursued her master’s degree and pre-doctoral studies in organic medicinal chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Adel S. Girgis. In 2022, she earned her PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Texas at Arlington under the supervision of Prof. Carl J. Lovely. After completing her internship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, Marian directed her focus toward molecular imaging. Marian joined MIPS in June 2025 for her second postdoctoral studies, and as a SCIT Fellow, she will work with her mentors to design and develop novel peptides using AI tools to identify the most potent lead pharmaceutical agents targeting undruggable targets, and to create corresponding radiotracers for preclinical evaluation in pancreatic and ovarian cancers.

Kathryn (Katie) Kapp, PhD
Mentor: Sharon Pitteri, PhD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 9/16/2025 - 9/15/2027

Kathryn (Katie) Kapp is a postdoctoral scholar in the Canary Center in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. She received her B.S. in chemistry, summa cum laude, from Gannon University (Erie, PA, 2017) and her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, 2023). As a graduate student, she used mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics to study plasma proteins that were associated with sepsis survival in a racially/ethnically diverse patient cohort. She is now working with Dr. Sharon Pitteri to use MS to study protein glycosylation in various clinical samples to advance early cancer detection. As a SCIT Fellow, she will continue her work in collaboration with Dr. Walter Park and work on integrating glycoproteomic and clinical data to improve pancreatic cancer detection and precursor risk stratification. Katie hopes to become an independent faculty member focusing on studying protein glycosylation in women's health conditions.