Sharing about their contributions to cutting-edge cancer genomics research at Stanford University, Dr. Lincoln Nadauld, director of Cancer Genomics at Intermountain Healthcare, and three Dixie State University students will be featured at the next installment of Dixie State University’s weekly lecture series Dixie Forum: A Window on the World.
Nadauld and DSU students Jordan Dockstader, Ryan Gibb and Makae Rose will share about the students’ experiences of working on developing therapies for cancer treatments while interning at Stanford University. The presentation is set to take place at noon on March 3 in the Dunford Auditorium, located in the Browning Resource Center on the Dixie State Campus. Admission is free, and the public is encouraged to attend.
In their Dixie Forum lecture, the team will discuss Dixie State University and Dixie Regional Medical Center’s partnership with Stanford University to offer an internship program, in which Dockstader, Gibb and Rose participated in last summer. Now in its seventh year, the opportunity allows Dixie State students to participate in undergraduate research at Stanford University each summer. During the internship, students help pursue breakthrough discoveries that advance scientists’ understanding of the human body.
Nadauld completed his clinical training in medical oncology at Stanford University himself, where he continued on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in solid tumor genomics. He then remained on faculty at the Stanford School of Medicine, focusing on cancer genomics and personalized cancer medicine. Nadauld earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Brigham Young University and received medical and doctoral degrees as well as clinical training at the University of Utah.
In addition to an extensive publication record, Nadauld’s advanced research has earned him the prestigious Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a Career Development Award from the National Caner Institute. Currently, as the director of Cancer Genomics at Intermountain Healthcare, an integrated healthcare system of more than 20 hospitals and 150 clinics, Naduald leads the clinical implementation of genomic-based cancer medicine.
A math and bioinformatics double major with minors in chemistry, physics and computer science, Dockstader has a passion for studying STEM fields. He has learned numerous programming, mathematical modeling, molecular biology and chemistry techniques and has participated in student competitions using differential equation modeling.
As part of his Stanford internship, Dockstader worked on the Human Genome Diversity Project in the Stanford School of Medicine Division of Oncology HanLee Ji lab. He developed a clustering algorithm to group individuals based on STR and SNP haplotypes, studying people from indigenous populations from around the world.
A senior at Dixie State, Gibb is on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English with a creative writing emphasis and minor in chemistry. He has worked as a private soccer trainer, an ESL tutor and a teaching assistant for biochemistry. He has served as president of the Dixie Pre-Medical Alliance, participated in the DSU/Intermountain Best in Class internship and acted as an ambassador for the University of Utah’s RUUTE program at DSU. He plans to take the MCAT and apply to medical school this summer.
While at Stanford, Gibb worked under Principal Investigator Hanlee Ji on a project specific to the human microbiome in the gut. His experiments included the sequencing of tissues from patients with colorectal cancer, and he analyzed the affects different forms of bacteria had on patient response to certain cancer immunotherapies.
Also a senior at DSU, Rose is studying biology with an emphasis in biological sciences and a minor in chemistry. In addition to being a member of the Booth Honors Program, Rose has participated in two independent research projects and interned at Intermountain Healthcare Precision Genomics. Following graduation, she is applying to the genetic engineering programs at Stanford University, University of British Columbia and University of Santa Barbra.
Rose worked in the Ford Lab at Stanford University, studying the effects of the new cancer drug INIPARIB, which was used for clinical trials with promising results. However, all trials were terminated when it was determined that the mechanism of the drug was unknown. The study Rose worked on looked into the drug’s effect in an effort to re-enter INIPARIB as a treatment option.
Dixie Forum is a weekly lecture series designed to introduce the St. George and DSU communities to diverse ideas and personalities while widening their worldviews via a 50-minute presentation. The series will take a short recess but will return on March 31 with a presentation from John Haller on artificial intelligence.