My long term research interests involve applying my expertise in basic cancer immunology to better understand the mechanisms driving the formation of productive anticancer immunity using advanced, clinically relevant tumor models, to ultimately inform immunotherapeutic treatment strategies. I received my Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Rochester under the advisement of Drs. Scott Gerber and David Linehan. As a result, I gained expertise in the design of clinically relevant combination therapies in transplantable tumor models including radiotherapy treated orthotopic pancreas cancer and pancreatic liver metastasis, which involve mouse survival surgeries and CT-guided, local delivery of fractionated radiotherapy. Further, I was involved in the planning of clinical trials based on our findings. I brought these expertise to the lab of Nikhil Joshi, an expert in T cell biology and advanced genetic and immunologic techniques, who specializes in the design of complex genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM) of cancer. Utilizing these complex GEMM, my postdoctoral research addresses fundamental questions in tumor immunology to fill critical gaps in our knowledge of the development and regulation of the antitumor T cell response in lung adenocarcinoma. In particular, I have established that the sustained presence of intratumoral, therapy-responsive CD8 T cells in cancer is maintained by a stable T cell reservoir in tumor-draining lymph nodes.