Dr. Mittal awarded early-career travel grant from National Cancer Institute

Dr. Shachi Mittal, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has been awarded an Early-Career Investigator Travel Award by the National Cancer Institute. This award will support Mittal in presenting her research at the 15th Early Detection Research Network Scientific Workshop this fall. 

The award recognizes outstanding contributions from early-career scientists and helps develop a community of investigators, collaborators, and mentors across the network. The Network Workshop will take place in Gaithersburg, Maryland in late September. 

“This is an incredible honor,” Mittal says. “It’s an opportunity to share this work with the EDRN community alongside leaders who have shaped the field of early cancer detection, and it means a great deal to see our work recognized as relevant to the network's mission. More than anything, it's a reminder of why this work matters, as early detection can change the entire trajectory of a patient's cancer journey.” 

At the workshop, Mittal will present her lab's AI-driven work in cancer detection, including: 

• Developing a deep learning framework for segmenting Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) images (tissues that have been dyed to review cellular structures). This recently patented technology can detect early-stage cancer and its immune microenvironment. 
• Tracking how damage to the esophagus caused by acid reflux progresses to a specific type of esophageal cancer known as esophageal adenocarcinoma. This project uses spatial multi-omics profiling, which combines many layers of biological data, including genomes and epigenomes. 
• Identifying colorectal cancer patients who are most likely to benefit from checkpoint inhibitor or anti-angiogenesis therapies using AI image analysis of Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E slides). This project was funded by the Early Detection Research Network. 
• Contributing to the broader mission of spatial immune profiling in breast cancer and a multimodal AI approach for risk stratification in early-stage breast cancer.