ORLANDO, FL–The American Association of Indian Scientists in Cancer Research (AAISCR) recently celebrated its 30th Annual Meeting in Orlando, FL in conjunction with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference.
The mission of this non-profit affiliate of AACR is to foster a community of Indian Scientists in Cancer Research. This was the first in-person meeting after three years of virtual meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By virtue of an organizational leadership change, Dr. Rita Ghosh was elected by the Board of Directors as the President and Dr. Dipak Sarkar as the Vice President. Dr. Aniruddha Ganguly, the immediate past-President and founder will serve as the CEO of AAISCR.
The annual meeting was sponsored in part by Biogenex (Fremont, CA), Active Motif (Carlsbad, CA), Dr. Raju Kucherlapati, Dr. Hamid and Vimla Band, Dr. Sujay Singh and many others in the Indian community of cancer researchers. The meeting was well attended by Cancer researchers from the US and from India.
Eleven awards were presented. AAISCR honored Dr. Shankar Ghosh with the Life-Time Achievement Award for his body of research that elucidated the role of the NF-kappaB family of transcription factors and their role in immunity and cancer. Dr. Ghosh is the chair of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine. He delivered the keynote address that spanned the body of his work for over 30 years. AAISCR also honored Dr. Yamuna Krishnan,
professor from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago with the Outstanding Scientist Award for her ground-breaking and highly innovative work using DNA nanodevice fluorescent reporters as imaging tools that can be used to probe many physiological and pathological states.
Two sponsored awards were announced. The AAISCR Tripti R Ghosh Memorial Award for Women Cancer Research Scientist was presented to Dr. Hina Mir (Cancer Health Equity Institute) and the AAISCR-PR Vijaylaxmi Award for Innovation in Cancer Research was presented to Dr. Surya De, Director of Chemistry Conju-Probe.
The two researchers that were awarded the AAISCR-Dr. Raju Kucherlapati Travel Scholarship Awards were Dr. Shivani Thoingdam (Henry Ford Health) and Mr. Akshay Hira (Wright State University). A third researcher, Dr. Sheetal Parida (John’s Hopkins University School of Medicine) received the AAISCR Travel Scholarship for Career Development. Given AAISCR’s focus on young cancer investigators, 5 awards were presented in this category. 2 graduate students (Aditi Khatpe from the Indiana University School of Medicine and Payal Ranade from the University of North Texas Health Science Center), 2 postdoctoral fellows (Drs. Uday Pratap, UT Health San Antonio and Sushmitha Sriramulu, Henry Ford Health) and a junior faculty (Dr. Netaji Muniraj, Center for Cancer and Immunology Research, Children’s National Hospital) received awards for their respective work.
The meeting ended with dinner and live music by Mrs. Mani Sastry which brough several members to the dance floor for a fun-filled celebration of the 30th annual meeting.
AAISCR is a non-profit 501 c 3 charity organization serving Indian American cancer research scientists for 30 years by supporting career development, facilitating networking and honoring best scientists.
