Quantitative personalized oncology Lab
Heiko Enderling, Ph.D., FSMB
- Associate Member, Integrated Mathematical Oncology & Radiation Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center
- Ph.D. in Mathematical Biology (University of Dundee, Scotland), 2006
- Diplom Ingenieur (M.S.) for Computational Visualistics (University of Magdeburg, Germany), 2003
- Fellow, Society for Mathematical Biology
- President-elect, Society for Mathematical Biology
- Director for Education and Outreach, Physical Sciences in Oncology Center
- Director, High school Internship Program in Integrated Mathematical Oncology (HIP IMO)
- Director, Integrated Mathematical Oncology PhD program major
- Co-Leader, Future of Radiation Oncology (FORT) clinical program, Department of Radiation Oncology
- 2020 Moffitt Research Mentor of the Year
- 2017 Moffitt Research Educator of the Year
- 2008 American Association for Cancer Research Centennial Postdoctoral Fellowship award
- 2007 British Oncology Association Young Investigator Award
- 2006 Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Award
- 2006 Scottish International Education Trust Award
- 2003 Dundee University Nicholl-Lindsay PhD scholarship award
Postdoctoral Fellows
Renee Brady-Nicholls, Ph.D.
Dr. Renee Brady-Nicholls joined the lab in 2017 after her graduate studies in applied mathematics at North Carolina State University. She is working on prostate cancer trial design, patient reported outcomes, and tumor-immune ecosystem dynamics.
Mohammad Zahid, Ph.D.
Dr. Mohammad Zahid joined the lab in 2019 after his graduate studies in engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is working on mathematical models of radiotherapy, as part of our Future of Radiation Therapy program at Moffitt.
Stefano Pasetto, Ph.D.
Dr. Stefano Pasetto joined the lab in 2019 after a successful career in astrodynamics. He spent a lot of time deriving complex system dynamics from sparse observations - skills that we hope to translate to quantitative personalized oncology.
Students
Daniel Glazar
Daniel joined the lab in 2019 as a Research Associate I. He graduated with a mathematics degree from USF and is currently gaining some research experiences. He is working on calibrating mathematical models to clinical data.
Rebecca Bekker
Rebecca joined the lab in 2019 as a Cancer Biology / Mathematical Oncology PhD student. She graduated with a MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is working on tumor immune dynamics in response to radiation therapy.
Isha Harshe
Isha joined the lab in 2020 as a student intern. She is double majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology and Psychology at USF. She is working on mathematical models of tumor-immune interactions.
Alumni / Collaborators
Ty Fierce Metteba
Ty joined the lab in 2020 as an intern. He is currently pursuing his degree in mathematics at Dartmouth College and is preparing himself for his PhD studies. He is working on analyzing clinical data to predict radiotherapy responses.
Thomas Lewin
Tom joined the lab in October 2015 as D.Phil. candidate in the Oxford Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), specifically the Systems Approaches to Biomedical Science - IDC. He is jointly supervised by me and Helen Byrne (Oxford, UK). Tom is working on mathematical models of radiation therapy and the proliferation saturation index, PSI.
Enakshi Sunassee
Enakshi joined the lab as a student intern in January 2016. She is an international student in USF's Engineering department, and is working on different mathematical models of tumor growth and radiation response. Her work also has an experimental component joint with Dr. Robert Gatenby's group.
Nuverah Mohsin
Nuverah joined the lab in 2019 as a summer intern. She has a degree in Mathematics and is currently training to become a medical doctor. She was working on a novel mathematical model to simulate radiotherapy responses in head and neck cancer.
Alexandria Johnson
Alexandria is a summer intern from St. Petersburg College working on patient-specific treatment response prediction models in prostate cancer.
Thomas Veith
Thomas is a summer intern from USF working on patient-specific treatment response prediction models in prostate cancer.
Keeana Harris
Keeana is a summer intern from UCF working on optimal treatment protocols for high-grade recurrent glioma patient.
Ambika Bhatt
Ambika is a HIP IMO student working on simulating radiation therapy in cervical cancer patients.
Michael Nicholas
Michael is a HIP IMO student working on simulating multi-variable radiation therapy models.
Lazlo Nziga
Lazlo is a HIP IMO student working on non-mechanistic models to predict prostate cancer treatment responses.
Katie Murphy
Katie is a HIP IMO student working on multi-variable prostate cancer treatment response prediction models.
Rachel Howard, Ph.D.
Dr. Rachel Howard (Walker) was a postdoctoral fellow the lab in 2015 - 2017. She was working on gastric carcinogenesis, with focus on H-Pylori infections, to identify patient-specific optimal screening schedules. Additionally she was working on radiation and immunotherapy for brain cancer.
Daniel Santiago, Ph.D.
Dr. Daniel Santiago was a postdoctoral fellow the lab 2016 - 2018. His position was joined with Daniel Abate-Daga's lab in immunology. He was working on CAR T cell therapy and oncolytic viruses.
Aaya Khalid
Aaya was an undergraduate student at USF. She was working on clinical data and the tumor-immune ecosystem composition and its consequences on radiation therapy outcomes.
Jan Poleszczuk, Ph.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Jan Poleszczuk was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab 2014-2016. He was working on evolutionary models of tumor progression with focus on high-performance computing. He was developing mathematical models of the abscopal effect to personalize radiation and immunotherapy.
We continue to collaborate on a variety of biological and clinical mathematical oncology projects.
Sotiris Prokopiou, Ph.D.
Dr. Sotiris Prokopiou was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab in 2013. He was working on personalized radiotherapy prediction models, using the proliferation saturation index, PSI. Sotiris followed the call from Industry and moved to CoSMo, a complex systems modeling company in Lyon, France.
Xuefeng Gao, Ph.D.
Dr. Xuefeng (Ryan) Gao was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab 2011-2013. He was working on agent based models of cancer stem cells, and the response and evolution of heterogeneous tumors to radiation therapy in particular.
Ryan moved to France and continued his career at INRIA and the Institute Pasteur.
Helena Hurbon
Helena is an REU student in Physics at the University of South Florida, jointly mentored with Dr. Eduardo Moros. She is a student at Eckerd College, and this summer she is working on simulating the immunological consequences of radiation therapy.
Abhi Bukkapatnam
Abhi is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan and alumni of the HIP IMO program. He is working on mathematical models of tumor growth and the role of TNF a. He is jointly supervised by Dr. David Goukassian at Temple University.
Jacob Hogan
Jake joined the lab as a summer student in June 2017. He is a bioinformatics student at Brigham Young University. He is part of the NCI CSBC/PSON summer internship program, and is jointly supervised by Drs. Robert Gatenby and Joel Brown. He is working on evolutionary models of cancer stem cells.
Aaron Scheiner
Aaron is a HIP IMO student and is working on simulating temperature-driven intracellular fluid dynamics.
Dean Tan
Dean is a HIP IMO student and is working on radiation response models for non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Nandi Adams
Nandi is a HIP IMO student and is working on tumor-immune interaction models and radiation response.
Tianlin Ji
Nate is a HIP IMO student and is working on radiation response models for oropharyngeal cancer (OPC).
Collaborators
Juan Carlos L. Alfonso, Ph.D.
Dr. Juan Carlos Alfonso is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Multiscale Modeling of Multicellular Systems (M3s) group in the Braunschweig Integrated Centre of Systems Biology (BRICS) at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. We are working on tumor-immune interaction and radiotherapy models.