Sumanta K. Pal, Professor and Vice Chair of Academic Affairs at City of Hope, shared a post on X:
“A message to Nazli Dizman:
Today you will graduate from your oncology fellowship at UT MD Anderson. The picture below is from the 2016 ESMO meeting in Copenhagen just after you started with my group at City of Hope. You were my first postdoctoral fellow, and honestly, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing when it came to mentoring you.
The fortunate thing is you were a self starter and made my job incredibly easy, paving a clear path not just for yourself but for the trainees that came after. It’s been a joy to see all that you have accomplished – publishing in Nature Medicine, The Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology and other top tier journals, getting amazing young investigator grants from ASCO, Kidney Cancer and more and racking up more Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation Merit Awards than any other trainee in recent memory (maybe tied with Cristiane D Bergerot?).
Along the way, you’ve kept a humility and kindness about you that is unmatched, always willing to lend a hand to your junior colleagues. Your road has not been an easy one, coming from tumultuous times abroad to City of Hope, then to Yale Internal Medicine and then to UT MD Anderson, but this arduous road has equipped you well for your first faculty position at Dana-Farber. I am so proud to see you join a group of oncology luminaries at Harvard University (Toni Choueiri, Kimmie Ng, Sara Tolaney, Misha Beltran and so many others!) – I am confident your stellar trajectory will continue further with their support.
Enjoy Boston and know that you will always have support and good vibes coming from the west coast.
All the best.”
Other articles featuring Dr. Sumanta on OncoDaily.