Stephanie Dudzinski M.D., Ph.D.

She defended her Ph.D. on “The Effects of Obesity on Immunotherapy Efficacy” in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She created this project after caring for cancer patients and observing that many were unfortunately not responding to the new immune checkpoint blockade cancer treatments. She plans to continue her research on investigating how combining radiation and immunotherapy alters the tumor immune microenvironment to better understand how to best synergistically combine these treatment modalities. During her training, she received several awards for her novel research, leadership, and excellent clinical care, including the P.E.O. Scholarship, the Hospital Award of Excellence, and the Lai Sulin Scholarship. In her personal life, she met her now-husband, Sumeeth Jonathan during orientation for their M.D./Ph.D. program. During graduate school, they got married and had their son, Christopher. They are very thankful to have couples matched with Stephanie completing a residency in Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson and Sumeeth completing a residency in Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Stephanie attributes much of her scientific curiosity to her AP Chemistry and Physics courses with Mr. Crumm and Mr. Adams, respectively.