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Cure Newsletter Volume 4 Issue 3, Department Of Oncology

Cancer Updates Research & Education (CURE) Archives

• Message from the Chair
• Advancing Oncology Through Education & Exchange
• Clinical Conversations & Collaborations
• Voices from Oncology “Invited Perspectives”
• Spotlight on Achievements
• Workshops Spotlight: Nurturing Clinical Excellence
• Moments That Matter "Celebrating Together”
• Umeed Parr
• Social Media Spotlight
• Oncology at CPSP “The Academic Contributions”
• Resident Reflections "Future Leaders in Oncology"
• Nursing Highlights
• The upcoming Event at Oncology
• Clinical Wisdom Shared via Grand Rounds
• Welcoming New Colleagues, “New Strengths”
• “Climbing Higher”, Promotions at Oncology
• “Where Research Meets Impact” Oncology Publications

Description’S Displacements: Writing Experience In Musil, Benjamin, And Bachmann, Aida Feng

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation unfolds the ways in which description emerged as an active site for reconfiguring human experience in the writing experiments of the 20th century. Description, as a procedure for presenting and arranging the phenomena of reality, typically constructs an epistemological realm of experience that progresses toward comprehension and internal consistency. Understood in this way, description mediates one kind of experiential reality while foreclosing others. This project enlarges description’s operative capabilities toward a presentational mode that does not merely re-describe the phenomenal objects in this reality. To do so, it foregrounds writers and thinkers who conversed directly with philosophical traditions …

Aligning Water And Carbon Goals In Sustainable Transitions To Clean Energy, Yan Du

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

As the global energy sector transitions toward cleaner and more sustainable sources, understanding the interdependencies between energy production and water resources becomes increasingly critical. Water is an essential input across a wide range of energy technologies – both conventional and renewable – impacting not only power generation efficiency but also broader dimensions of environmental sustainability, climate resilience, and resource equity. These interdependencies are central to the water-energy nexus, where decisions about one resource inevitably affect the other. In this context, assessing water-use efficiencies across diverse energy systems offers valuable insights into how societies can optimize resource allocation, minimize ecological impacts, …

Development And Mechanistic Investigation Of First-Row Transition Metal-Catalyzed Alkene Functionalization Reactions, Juan Serviano

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This thesis describes the discovery and mechanistic studies of cobalt- and iron-catalyzed alkene hydrofunctionalization reactions. Chapter 1 introduces the fields of alkene hydrofunctionalization via metal-catalyzed hydrogen atom transfer (MHAT) and first-row transition metal-catalyzed alkene dicarbofunctionalization. Chapter 2 describes a method for intermolecular hydroalkoxylation and hydrocarboxylation of 2-azadienes using oxidative cobalt-catalyzed hydrogen atom transfer. The method generates 2-azaallyl cation equivalents under mild conditions to yield hemiaminal ethers and esters, and is chemoselective for 2-azadienes in the presence of other C=C double bonds. Chapter 3 describes the synthesis, characterization, and reactivity of an isolable alkylcobalt complex that models an intermediate proposed in …

Functional Roles Of Subcellularly Localized Glycolytic Isoforms Of Glucose 6-Phosphate Isomerase, Ian Joseph Gonzalez

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

While metabolic pathways are largely conserved across cells and organisms, tissues exhibit metabolic heterogeneity that tailors metabolism to their physiological demands. How the conserved pathways of metabolism achieve metabolic heterogeneity is incompletely understood, particularly in vivo. In this dissertation, I investigate the genetic requirement of glucose 6-phosphate isomerase (GPI-1), a conserved glycolytic enzyme that also regulates the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP). Using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, I found that gpi-1 knockout animals display germline defects consistent with impaired PPP, and somatic defects consistent with impaired glycolysis. I discovered that GPI-1 isoforms are differentially expressed and localized: GPI-1A is cytosolic in all …

Epidemiologic And Immunologic Characterization Of The Post-Acute Sequelae Of Covid-19, Christine Marie Miller

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Since its emergence in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 15 million people—and the number continues to rise. The global impact of this novel coronavirus has been profound, reshaping not only public health infrastructure but also our understanding of human biology. The full extent of the virus’s effects on the immune system remains incompletely understood and will likely take years to fully unravel. What is already evident, however, is that SARS-CoV-2 uniquely modulates both innate and adaptive immunity, with consequences that span the developmental spectrum—from fetal and pediatric stages through adulthood. While many individuals recover without overt clinical sequelae, an …

Glycolysis-Induced Acidification Links Mitochondrial Deficiency To Axon Degeneration, Hadas Dabas

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Axons extend far from the neuronal soma and depend on local energy metabolism to sustain signaling and structural integrity. Mitochondria are normally abundant in axons, where they provide numerous utilities. In many neurodegenerative diseases, however, mitochondrial function or trafficking is impaired, but the mechanisms linking mitochondrial loss to axon degeneration remain unclear.In this dissertation, I use C. elegans mitochondrial trafficking mutants, in which axons completely lack mitochondria, to define the metabolic basis of degeneration. I find that glycolysis, typically viewed as a protective energy source, unexpectedly promotes axon breakdown. Elevated glycolytic flux in axons without mitochondria leads to accumulation of …

Advanced Spectroscopic Techniques For Probing The Photophysical Properties Of Metal Halide Perovskites, Shunran Li

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have emerged as a versatile class of semiconductors with exceptional optoelectronic properties, yet their performance is intricately linked to their structural, dynamical, and photophysical characteristics. This dissertation presents a comprehensive investigation of MHPs—spanning three-dimensional, low-dimensional, and lead-free double perovskite compositions—using advanced spectroscopic techniques from the mid-infrared to X-rays. Steady-state optical spectroscopies are employed to probe ground-state properties and structure–property relationships, with emphasis on chiral 2D hybrid perovskites. A reflection-based methodology is developed to determine the intrinsic circular-polarization-dependent complex refractive index of single crystals, enabling quantitative separation of circular dichroism and birefringence. The formation of distinct spherulitic …

Associations Between Mental Health Conditions And Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes Among Active-Duty Servicewomen, Laura Manzo

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Active duty servicewomen (ADSW) have increased risk for mental health conditions compared to civilian women. Civilian research demonstrates that women with mental health conditions experience serious pregnancy complications at rates 50% higher than those without mental health conditions. Although mental health conditions are the leading underlying cause of maternal mortality, there is limited research on the prevalence of perinatal mental health conditions among active duty servicewomen (ADSWs) or their association with adverse pregnancy outcomes. This study aimed to explore associations of mental health conditions and adverse pregnancy outcomes in a population of ADSW. Methods Department of Defense Birth and Infant …

‘Soñando En Un Futuro Mejor’: U.S. Empire, Racial Capitalism, And Garífuna And Afro-Caribbean Radicalism In Caribbean Honduras, 1920-1963, Cristian Jose Padilla Romero

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation argues that Afro-Caribbean and Garífuna radicals in 20th-century Honduras forged, at different times, radical, race-conscious, and sometimes anti-imperialist and nationalist politics that contested both U.S. corporate domination and the racialized exclusions of the U.S and Honduran nation-state. Focusing on the period between 1920 and 1963, it traces struggles across the Caribbean coastal cities of La Ceiba, Trujillo, Puerto Cortés, and Tela. By foregrounding Black and Indigenous working-class actors, like Centeno García and Alfonso Lacayo, it highlights how racial capitalism, labor radicalism, and anti-Black state and corporate repression intersected in Honduras’ banana economy. The stories of individuals like Centeno …

Manufactured Enchantments: Technologizing The Self In The Twentieth-Century Americas, Isabel Ortiz

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Manufactured Enchantments examines the way in which forms of enchantment worked at various sites—from culture industries, to self-help doxa, to esoteric and occult practices, to intellectual life—to construct an ideal self tailored to geopolitical violence in the U.S. and Latin America during the twentieth century. The dissertation studies five technologies—psychoanalysis, film, the rotoscope, the enneagram, and the tarot—that each suggested a self that could be stretched, modified, or altered to meet conditions of violence, uncertainty and precarity stemming from pre- and peri-Cold War U.S. imperial expansion efforts in the Americas. In each case study, I examine how the featured technology …

Cell State Dependent Strategies For Resolving Fundamental Properties Of Ligands Via Receptor Processes, Andrew Goetz

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Ligands may carry information through features such as their concentration, identity, and spatial distribution. Cells that can resolve these properties gain access to additional dimensions of information which may be beneficial as certain ligand properties possess unique features (e.g., ligand identity does not disperse with distance the way concentration does). Cells can accomplish this, at least in part, through the use of signaling cascades initiated by membrane receptors which bind to the ligand and activate downstream processes. The properties of these signaling cascades depend on the "state" of the cell (a property encompassing important cell features like protein levels and …

Smart Synthesis: Harnessing Electrochemistry To Enhance Catalytic Water Treatment, Aidan Francis Meese

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Catalytic water treatment technologies hold great promise for degrading even the most recalcitrant contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Heterogeneous catalytic processes are especially appealing, providing the benefits of easy catalyst recovery and reduced risk of secondary pollution. However, heterogeneous reactions often suffer from mass transfer limitations, and the development of catalyst materials that are sufficiently active, selective, and stable under the conditions necessary for pollutant degradation remains challenging. Furthermore, synthesis of catalyst materials, particularly those with desirable catalytic properties and novel architectures, are often time- and energy-intensive and involve expensive materials and/or equipment. In this work, we address these challenges …

Nanoporous Inp And Its Application In Short-Wave Infrared Vertical-Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers, Chenziyi Mi

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) range is a crucial wavelength window with a wide range of applications. Just to name a few, it covers the important telecommunication bands, provides advantages in bio-sensing and there are emerging applications recently such as noninvasive glucose monitoring, eye-safe 3D sensing and Si photonics. The development of SWIR vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) has been ongoing for more than 30 years but has not yet led to commercialization. The main reason is that it hasn't been easy to build highly reflective distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). Unlike the GaAs systems, materials lattice-matched to InP suffers from …

Understanding The Formation Of Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies Through Systematic Observations, Zili Shen

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) are low-mass, large-sized galaxies that challenge traditional galaxy formation theories. Understanding how UDGs formed is crucial because each formation pathway can constrain different physical processes relevant to galaxy formation. The proposed formation pathways include early quenching, stellar feedback, and mergers, each generating predictions about the halo mass, the stellar population, and the Globular Cluster (GC) population of the galaxy. In this thesis, we develop observational techniques to distinguish between these key pathways. First, we found that UDGs can form in the absence of dark matter (DM) in a high speed merger of progenitor dwarf galaxies. Using a …

Streamlining Drug Discovery With The Aid Of Artificial Intelligence And Physics-Based Modeling, Anastasia Saar

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The drug discovery pipeline is both expensive and prone to high attrition rates with many compounds failing in late-stage clinical trials. Computer-aided drug design (CADD) has emerged as a pivotal part of the pipeline to mitigate these challenges by enabling earlier and more cost-effective assessment of compound viability. This work focuses on two major aspects of CADD: absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) predictions and free energy calculations. First, neural network models are developed for the prediction of aqueous solubility and cytotoxicity, two key contributors to late-stage drug attrition. Ensemble models of graph convolutional networks (GCNs) and graph attention …

A Dimensional Approach To Assessing The Effects Of Early-Life Stress On Mental Health Across Development, Emily Meryl Cohodes

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Decades of research inform our understanding of the pernicious effects of exposure to stress for individuals across the lifespan. This research underscores that exposure to stressful contexts places individuals at increased risk for developing cognitive, social, emotional, and physical health problems. However, exposure to stress does not have a universal effect on all individuals across development, likely due in part to the extreme heterogeneity in experiential, environmental, and temporal aspects of stress. Recent advances in the study of the psychobiological effects of stress have focused on better understanding how heterogeneity in exposure may account for heterogeneity in developmental and clinical …

Approaches To Strongly-Coupled Field Theory, Joseph Dominicus Lap

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Roughly a microsecond after the big-bang, the universe was too hot and dense to form the protons or neutrons of quotidian matter. The process in which a hot soup of quarks and gluons coalesced into standard matter was strongly-coupled and dynamical, making it difficult to analyze with standard techniques such as perturbative QFT and lattice simulations. This thesis showcases various attempts at better understanding this enigmatic phenomenon: effective field theory (Phys.Lett.B 23), CFT approaches to quantum information theory (JHEP 24, JHEP 25), and Energy-Energy Correlators (in progress).

Causal Inference For Environmental And Text-Based Interventions, Megan Ayers

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Causal inference provides statistical tools for generating empirical evidence about causal relationships. In conventional settings, randomized experiments can enable estimation of causal effects with simple methods and under weak assumptions, but many pressing causal questions concern complex systems where standard approaches break down. This dissertation presents advances and insights for such cases, first in the context of carbon markets and conservation programs, and then in settings where text serves as treatment. In the first chapter, we develop a generalized causal inference framework for analyzing forest carbon protocols. Recent work has questioned the credibility of forest carbon offsets as an environmental …

An Ecological Approach For Understanding The Influence Of Threats In Youth’S Social Environments, May Isabella Conley

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

A central question motivating developmental research for decades has been how threats in youth’s social environments influence development. In particular, researchers have focused on understanding how threats in different contexts in youth’s social environments increase risk for adverse outcomes and why some youth exposed to threats appear more susceptible to adverse outcomes than others. Increasingly, researchers have identified cognitive and neurobiological factors that are thought to contribute to youth’s susceptibility to threats. Despite these advances, our understanding of the influence of threats on development remains incomplete due to a few critical limitations. Notably, while foundational ecological theories emphasize youth’s social …

Serving Subjects - Oratorical Self-Representation In Deliberative Settings In Aristotle, Quintilian, Christian Weise, And Adam Müller, Marc Petersdorff

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

In this dissertation, I address the following question: how does the tradition of rhetoric answer the question of how a subject constitutes itself that can only act by constituting another subject that will act in its stead? For this purpose, I focus on the subject of oratorical self-representation in four theories of rhetoric to each of which one more or less self-contained chapter is dedicated. The first two are prominent examples from antiquity: Aristotle's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Institution Oratories. The other two come from German-speaking traditions: Christian Weise's Politischer Redner and Adam Müller's Zwölf Reden über die Beredsamkeit und deren …

Satellite Galaxy Kinematics: A Competitive And Complementary Probe Of The Galaxy-Halo Connection And Cosmology, Kaustav Mitra

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Most cosmological analyses of galaxy surveys under-utilize the data from the smallest scales. Firstly, analytical calculations become challenging in the fully non-linear regime. Moreover, the small scales are inherently plagued by several systematic uncertainties, such as the effects of baryons. Interestingly, analyses that have delved into the non-linear regimes of structure formation, mostly using galaxy clustering or weak gravitational lensing, often show an ongoing tension with the probes of early Universe physics, such as the cosmic microwave background, about the exact values of some of the cosmological parameters. This begs the following questions: (a) Can we think of a new …

The Roles Of Terrestrial Weathering And Marine Bioturbation In Shaping Earth’S Surface Habitability Across Time, Brian Beaty

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The existence of life on Earth for over 3.8 billion years implies continuously habitable conditions despite major changes to the planet’s climate and surface geochemistry. In this thesis, I explore two Earth surface processes – terrestrial weathering and marine bioturbation – and their roles in shaping environmental habitability across various timescales. Weathering has long been recognized as a fundamental component of the Earth system. On multi-million-year timescales, it is the primary source for limiting nutrients to the biosphere and primary sink for atmospheric CO2. This concept underlies recent interest in artificially accelerating global weathering rates to mitigate near-future warming. However, …

Two Systems For User Control On The Modern Web, Caleb Malchik

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Providers of web services and content are compelled to offer value in order to attract users, but they are also increasingly incentivized to abuse their users in order to maximize revenue. Interfaces that monitor, distract, manipulate, and addict users are commonplace, and means of resistance are largely individualized and dependent on technical proficiency. This dissertation advocates a collective approach to empowering users in their relationship to the web services that they use, centered on an organizational form known as the data co-op. We describe two software systems that pair naturally with data co-ops and are designed to improve users’ control …

Exploring The Dynamical Properties Of Resolved Stellar Satellites And Streams, Juan Guerra

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The ΛCDM model for cosmology accurately predicts the large scale structure of our universe. However, at smaller scales (≤ 100 Mpc) observations are at tension with what ΛCDM predicts. Dwarf galaxies which exhibit scale radii on the order of pc to kpc and stellar streams which span sizes of up to several 100 kpc have the potential to shed light into these discrepancies between observations and theory. One particular misconception comes from the distribution of dark matter in the inner regions of dwarf galaxies. ΛCDM dark matter only simulations predict the steeply rising density profiles, while observations of several systems …

Unraveling The Phenotypic Plasticity In Glioblastoma, Chunxiao Ren

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Cell plasticity enables cancer cells to transition between distinct phenotypic states, driving heterogeneity and therapeutic resistance. Here, I present the RACE (Rapid Analysis of Cell phenotypic Extremes) assay, a longitudinal in vitro experimental model designed to functionally isolate and enrich fast- and slow-migrating glioblastoma (GBM) cell subpopulations in response to mechanical input imposed by an extracellular matrix (ECM)-mimicking nanofabricated platform with pro-migratory property. I tracked these phenotypically distinct subpopulations and characterized their dynamic evolution through bulk and single-cell transcriptomic profiling. I found that fast- and slow-migrating cells corresponded to mesenchymal- and proneural-like transcriptional programs, respectively, and were regulated by a …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Kras Regulation And Resistance In Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma, Xiangyu Ge

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains one of the most aggressive human malignancies, with a five-year survival rate of less than 13%. Oncogenic KRAS mutations occur in over 90% of cases and drive tumor initiation and progression, making KRAS a desirable therapeutic target. Despite the development of direct KRAS inhibitors, clinical efficacy has been modest due to rapid adaptive resistance. This thesis primarily investigates the molecular mechanisms by which PDAC cells adapt to KRAS inhibition, while also uncovering co-vulnerabilities that can be therapeutically exploited. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive literature review of KRAS biology in PDAC, summarizing historical and contemporary findings …

Characterizing And Modeling Spectral State Dynamics In Human Cortex, Heraclitos Maximos Lefcochilos-Fogelquist

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

There is increasing evidence that the large-scale spectral dynamics of human cortex can exhibit non-Gaussian features and marked variation over a range of timescales in resting state. Robust documentation and characterization of such complex phenomena, however, remains a challenge and is comparatively sparse, given the paradigmatic complexity of the human brain. Here, we adopt a methodological approach which can account for dynamic changes in spectral signals of electrophysiological data by explicitly using a measure of spectral variation over time, for which we can generate single-variable time courses, enabling robust characterization of the real-time activity of spectral modes across various timescales. …

Acquisition Of Hydrogen To Earth-Like Planets By The Solar Wind Radiation: A Possible Way To Get Water Within The Snowline During Planetary Formation, Qinting Jiang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Volatile delivery of terrestrial planets within the snowline is one of the key issues in planetary science. The solar wind has been considered a significant contributor to the volatile acquired by dust within the snowline and of airless planetary bodies surfaces. This thesis explores the effects of solar wind implantation on planetary materials through a series of experimental and theoretical studies, focusing on three interrelated aspects: volatile acquisition, lattice damage mechanical weakening dust grains, and volatile isotopic evolution of the irradiated mineral grains. First, we performed hydrogen implantation experiments on olivine, orthopyroxene, and quartz to investigate the distribution and concentration …

Chemosensory Variation Within And Across Bacterial Species, Jeremy Philippe Moore

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Bacteria use a highly conserved sensory pathway to navigate chemical gradients. In particular, the chemotactic signaling pathway of Escherichia coli is one of the best-characterized systems in biology. However, despite decades of study, there are still open questions about bacterial chemotaxis, including how clusters of receptors cooperatively amplify signals, how variability in the composition of these arrays affects behavioral diversity, and how findings in E. coli generalize to diverse motile behaviors across bacteria. In this thesis, we explore diversity in chemosensory capabilities within and across bacteria species. First, we characterize the distribution of sensitivities to various chemical attractants in populations …