Innovation Insider

Spring 2024

Director’s Message

The work we do each day at the Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) gathers around a common aim: to solve cancer problems for the benefit of individuals and communities affected by cancer.

The CCIL’s unique vision and mission guides our efforts and the pace of innovation is quickening. Ideas are moving to discoveries, discoveries are leading to the development of novel technologies, technologies and interventions are being translated to better diagnostics and therapies with our clinical partners, where physicians implement CCIL solutions—that’s the pipeline of cancer research you’ll read about in this latest edition of Innovation Insider. “Discovery to Use” is not just our guiding principle, you will read stories where it is put into action by our CCIL members, staff, and students.

You’ll meet seven new CCIL members from various disciplines who recently joined our two research programs, including a clinician-scientist member in partnership with engineering-based Carle Illinois College of Medicine. You’ll see the CCIL’s robust, far-reaching educational pipeline spanning from high school to undergraduate to postdoctoral and on to alums performing innovative cancer research. You’ll meet prominent CCIL members whose research has garnered national honors and awards. At the heart of our efforts are people—our own and all whom we hope to impact with our work.

I hope you will see this impact emerging from our highly collaborative, interdisciplinary research amongst the stories in this issue of Innovation Insider. These are just a sampling of what we could include in a magazine; I urge you to visit our website, visit us in person, and connect with the CCIL to learn more.

As always, I am deeply grateful for the faculty, students, staff, volunteers, and donors who work diligently to keep the momentum of this unique cancer center moving toward greater innovation and a better future for cancer patients, survivors, and their families.

Rohit Bhargava

CCIL Director

To learn more about the stories in this issue of Innovation Insider, email us at cancercenter@illinois.edu.