Yale Cancer Center-Advanced Training Program for Physician-Scientists (YCC-ATPP)

Dr. Eric Winer is the Director of Yale Cancer Center as well as President and Physician-in-Chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital. He is also the Alfred Gilman Professor of Medicine and Deputy Dean for Cancer Research at Yale. An internationally renowned expert in breast cancer, Dr. Winer has led and collaborated on dozens of clinical trials that have changed the care of individuals with all stages and subtypes of the disease. Dr. Winer was President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) from 2022-2023 and Chair of the Board of Directors from 2023-2024. He is the current Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Dr Winer served as Chief Scientific Advisor for Susan G. Komen for the Cure for over 10 years and was co-chair of the CALGB/Alliance Breast Committee for over a decade and then led the National Cancer Institute Breast Cancer Steering Committee from 2016-2022. Dr. Winer, who was formerly a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and on the faculty of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, was the recipient of the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School in 2020. He has received numerous awards for his breast cancer research, notably the William L. McGuire Memorial Lecture Award in 2016 at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, the Gianni Bonadonna Breast Cancer Award at ASCO in 2017, and the Susan G. Komen Brinker Award for Clinical Research in 2018. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed research articles. Dr. Winer is an alumnus of both Yale College and Yale School of Medicine. After receiving his medical degree in 1983, he completed training in internal medicine and served as chief resident at Yale New Haven Hospital. He completed a fellowship in hematology/oncology at Duke University School of Medicine and served on the Duke faculty from 1989 to 1997. He then joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School where he built an internationally prominent breast cancer program. He served as principal investigator of the Specialized Program of Research Excellence in breast cancer at Dana-Farber for over a decade. Prior to his move to Yale, he held the Thompson Chair in Breast Cancer Research and served as senior vice president for medical affairs at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Jennifer Afranie-Sakyi, MD, is an assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology and hematology). A graduate of Yale's Medical Oncology-Hematology Fellowship Program, Afranie-Sakyi was the recipient of the prestigious American Society of Hematology Minority Hematology Fellow Award and has published and presented research on sickle cell disease. She cares for patients in both New Haven and Orange.

Hometown: Minnetonka, Minnesota Undergraduate: MIT Medical School: Dartmouth Clinical Interests: Surgical Oncology and Thoracic Surgery Research Interests: Cancer Immunology, Peritoneal Surface Malignancies, Mesothelioma, Immunotherapy, Clinical Trial Design and Implementation, Robotic Surgery, AI-application/analysis, and Computational/Prediction Modeling Hobbies: Ice hockey, golf, rock climbing, billiards, coding, pickle-ball, hiking, gardening, and camping

Dr. Xiao Wang is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Yale School of Medicine and a member of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers at Yale Cancer Center. He provides care for patients with gastrointestinal malignancies at Smilow Cancer Hospital in North Haven, with a strong commitment to patient-centered, compassionate, and comprehensive oncology care. Dr. Wang earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He then completed his Internal Medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as a hospitalist caring for patients with hematologic and lymphatic malignancies. He subsequently completed fellowship training in Medical Oncology at Yale, during which he was funded on the prestigious T32 training grant at the Yale Cancer Center. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Wang is a health services researcher focused on precision oncology care delivery and outcomes at both national and local levels. He is a member of Yale’s Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center and has led, presented, and published research on molecular testing practices in cancer care.

Amin Nassar, M.D., is a hematology/oncology fellow at Yale University. He received his medical degree from the American University of Beirut and completed residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Nassar also pursued a two-year postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he worked under the mentorship of Professors Dr. David Kwiatkowski, Dr. Toni Choueiri, and Dr. Matthew Freedman at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the identification of genomic biomarkers across ancestral populations with cancer. Dr. Nassar currently serves on the editorial board of “Molecular biology reports”, “Translational oncology”, and “Frontiers in Oncology”. He is also one of the Associate Guest editors for the journal “Frontiers in Oncology”. He has published >50 original articles, 20 as first or co-first author, which include, as detailed below, first-author papers in Nature Communications, Cancer Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, JNCI, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He has also been an invited speaker to several conferences including AACR, XXIV SBOC, Korean Society of Medical Oncology, and Prostate Cancer Foundation. Dr. Nassar is interested in a career as a physician-scientist with a clinical focus in thoracic oncology. He is currently pursuing a PhD in tumor immunology at the Flavell lab.