Marian Awadalla, PhD
Mentor: 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.

Mingen (Jason) Liu, MD
Mentors: Hanlee Ji, MD and Sylvia Plevritis, PhD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 7/1/2025 - 6/30/2027

Mingen (Jason) Liu is a Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in oncology. Jason completed his BA in Molecular Biology at University of California Berkeley and his MD-PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, where his research focused on immune cell metabolism regulates macrophage anti-tumor activity in pancreatic cancer. He then joined Stanford for his oncology fellowship. He has worked on tumor heterogeneity and metastasis in gastrointestinal malignancies, such as colorectal cancer. In the SCIT program, he will be mentored by Dr. Hanlee Ji and Dr. Sylvia Pleviritis to examine how spatial transcriptomic and radiologic approaches can inform radiogenomic analyses of colorectal cancer metastases to the brain.

Colin Bergstrom, MD
Mentor: Alice Fan, MD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 7/1/2024 - 6/30/2026

Colin Bergstrom is a Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in Oncology and Hematology. Originally from Oregon. He earned his B.S in Biochemistry from the University of Oregon Honors College (2011), completed his medical degree at Oregon Health and Sciences University (2017) and completed an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, TX (2020). Post-residency, he was awarded a year-long research training grant funded through Burroughs Welcome Foundation investigating the interplay between the gut microbiota and the processes of metastasis and carcinogenesis through murine models. In his fellowship at Stanford his research has focused on strategies focused on detecting early therapeutic response in order to personalize therapies and mitigate toxicities. As a SCIT fellow, he will work with mentors Drs. Alice Fan and Jeremey Dahl utilizing novel ultrasound technologies for early detection of treatment response to immunotherapy in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and other Genitourinary Cancers.  Additionally, he will also collaborate with Dr. Iagaru investigating dynamic changes in circulating free RNA in patients undergoing 177Lu-PSMA-617.

Hoda Hashemi, PhD
Mentors: Jeremy Dahl, PhD; Steven Poplack, MD; and Ramasamy Paulmurugan, PhD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 3/1/2024 - 2/28/2026

Hoda S. Hashemi is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ultrasound Imaging & Instrumentation Laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. Her research interests include ultrasound molecular imaging, doppler imaging, elastography and deep learning. She received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, the M.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Concordia University, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of British Columbia. She was also an ultrasound research intern in the research and innovation team at DarkVision Technologies Inc. from 2021 to 2023. During her Ph.D. studies, she developed an ultrafast volumetric elastography technique for the non-invasive measurement of tissue elasticity, focusing particularly on diagnosis of liver fibrosis. As a SCIT Fellow, she will work with her mentors to develop signal processing and deep learning frameworks aimed at advancing ultrasound molecular imaging for the early detection of breast cancer.

Farbod Tabesh, PhD
Mentors: Ramasamy Paulmurugan, PhD and Jeremy Dahl, PhD
(2/1/2024 - 1/31/2026)

Farbod is a postdoctoral fellow at Canary Center and Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), Department of Radiology, working on a wide range of research fields, including preparing biocompatible polymeric gene carriers, targeted gene delivery, cancer diagnosis and therapy, ultrasound molecular imaging of endothelial biomarkers, immune checkpoint therapy, and DNA- and RNA-based vaccines. He is also interested in researching environmental issues like water contamination, human health like cancer, and applying renewable sources to replace petroleum-based materials in industrial applications. After completing a B.Sc. in Applied Chemistry and M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry, he earned his Ph.D. in Organic-Polymer Chemistry from Isfahan University of Technology in 2019. He worked on synthesizing magnetic nanostructures and hydrogel nanocomposites based on polysaccharide gums for water pollutant removal applications. As a SCIT fellow, he will use his chemistry knowledge to prepare phospholipid-based nanodroplets to target triple-negative breast cancer and then phase-transfer them into microbubbles for imaging purposes to understand the tumor microenvironment and, eventually, treat the cancer by PD-L1 immunotherapy.