RYAN KAWALERSKI

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Ryan is currently an undergraduate student in the Departments of Applied Math & Statistics and Biochemistry at Stony Brook University. He began his research training on the Stony Brook International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition team in 2015, transitioning briefly to work with Dr. Emmanuel Asare in the Wimmer Laboratory and then with Dr. Michael Klingener in the Aguirre Laboratory before starting his work in 2017 in the Shroyer/Escobar-Hoyos Laboratory. Ryan concurrently works with Dr. Richard Moffitt in Biomedical Informatics.

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Ryan is especially interested in using high-throughput proteomics and transcriptomics to inform his bench work on precision medicine approaches in cancer. He is currently working on a project to identify the molecular mechanism by which Keratin 17 (K17) assumes its tumorigenic capacity in pancreatic cancer. He is collaborating with Dr. Natasha Snider at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to identify post-translational regulatory markers on K17 that can alter its subcellular localization and function. Importantly, his goal is to target these markers pharmacologically to discover a novel therapeutic avenue with which to target aggressive pancreatic cancer cells.

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This past year, Ryan was awarded the 2018 Barry Goldwater Scholarship for his work in the lab, and has presented his work at several Stony Brook research symposiums. Additionally, he was awarded a research grant to support his work this past summer. Recently, Ryan presented a poster at the annual American Association for Cancer Research Pancreatic Cancer meeting in Boston, MA.