What We Do

This project focuses on the more broad center goal of analyzing cancer across the tree of life, with an emphasis on the differences in cancer risk between the Sauropsids (birds + reptiles), Amphibians, and Mammals.

This project plans to compile reproductive cancer prevalence for mammalian species and model the predictive power of life history traits on the patterns of reproductive cancer prevalence observed.

This project aims to understand how a dynamic environment can allow cooperative cells to survive and thrive under changing conditions. An understanding of this mechanism can allow us to better explain how cells started to cheat, and how cancer suppression systems formed.

The primary objective of this project is to work with the adaptive therapy gene expression and exome sequencing dataset. The goal is to determine the life history strategies for cancer cells under different modalities of cancer treatment based on the expression of growth factors, immune blockade, and angiogenic factors.

This project focuses on the role sexual dimorphism plays in cancer prevalence across species.

This project will focus on information that will be pertinent to patients recently diagnosed with cancer. Members of this project will choose a type of cancer that interests them and will work on creating a guide for patients that outlines what to expect after their diagnosis, treatment options, and more, along with studies that support the information. These guides are intended to educate patients after their diagnosis, which is often a confusing and frightening time, and to give them the information they need to make the important decisions they’ll be faced with.

This project seeks to understand how do we talk, or not, about cancer and what implications does that have for patients, families and various interactions and outcomes, such as doctor-patient interactions, choosing a course of treatment, and more.

The coral cancer project aims to obtain whole genome sequencing from abnormal and neighboring normal samples from the Acropora genus and test if nearby growth abnormalities are clonal, and therefore transmissible cancers.

Age is the single biggest risk factor for cancer in humans so most of this work will emphasize if it is as significant a risk factor in non-human animals. This project will implement common human cancer models such as Kaplan-Meier curves to our animal cancer data.

The purpose of this project is to engage in science communication and outreach efforts with the purpose of translating scientific findings into everyday knowledge that reaches a broad audience, from children at the elementary school level to various communities.

The purpose of this project is to call on single nucleotide variants from groups of samples sequenced at low depth.

The purpose of this project is to look at how diet and the microbiome affect cancer progression.