Geoffrey Beene Graduate Student Fellows (From left) John Halliday, Neha Bhagwat, and Ellen Hukkelhoven are recognized as Geoffrey Beene Graduate Student Fellows by faculty member Eric Holland (at podium) and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center President Harold Varmus.

Semanti Mukherjee Awarded Chairman's Prize

Third-year student Semanti Mukherjee was awarded the Chairman's Prize for her first-author paper In vitro mammalian cytotoxicological study of PAMAM dendrimers -towards quantitative structure activity relationships, published March 2009 in Nature Genetics. The focus of the research was a germline, Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) SNP, which increases susceptibility to myeloproliferative neoplasms. See Semanti's application essay for full explanation of the the significance of the work and the key findings.

This award was established by Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Board of Trustees Chairman Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., for whom our graduate school is named. Mr. Gerstner is an internationally renowned corporate leader who has long been an advocate of quality education. The Chairman's Prize will be awarded annually.

Geoffrey Beene Graduate Student Fellowships Announced

Three second-year students -- Neha Bhagwat, John Halliday, and Ellen Hukkelhoven -- received Geoffrey Beene Graduate Student Fellowships. These fellowships were awarded by the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which was established with funds from the Estate of Geoffrey Beene to help realize the late designer's goal of providing support to make meaningful progress against cancer.

Recipients are selected at the end of their first year of study based on academic excellence. By providing support for outstanding students at Gerstner Sloan-Kettering, the Beene Fellowships are designed to expand the pool of investigators trained to pursue research in the highly complex, multidisciplinary field of cancer biology.

Two Grayer Fellows Named

Third-year students Nicholas Gauthier and Karen Hunter have been named the first Grayer Fellows at Gerstner Sloan-Kettering. These fellowships were established by Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Grayer. Mr. Grayer is a member of the Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Board of Trustees and the former chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc., which he transformed from a small test prep provider into a global education corporation serving over one million students.

Grayer Fellows are selected based on achieved excellence, as demonstrated by their thesis proposal examinations.