On June 11, David Qian PhD ’16 (Quantitative Biomedical Sciences) was awarded the 2016 John W. Strohbehn Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research at the Dartmouth College's Graduate Investiture Ceremony. The Strohbehn Award is awarded annually to a graduating PhD candidate who best exemplifies qualities of a scientific scholar—intellectual curiosity, dedication, and commitment to the pursuit of new scientific knowledge and to teaching--as well as a sense of social responsibility to the research community.
Qian was a PhD-candidate in the Dept. of Biomedical Data Science (BMDS) research interests are in leveraging big data (individual genomic/transcriptomic profiles) to better infer disease risk and tailor therapies for patients. As part of David's training in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences, he worked with Dr. Chris Amos's group to understand how genetic variations influence disease risk and response to immunotherapy, primarily focusing on characterizing and predicting lung cancer risk using germline variations. David has also applied his research to investigating breast cancer and prostate cancer. A recent collaboration with surgical oncologist Dr. Richard Barth, also looked at the somatic variations within resected liver metastases from colorectal cancer patients that allow inference of immunologic response to dendritic cell vaccination, an indicator of favorable prognosis. David currently mentors several other graduate and undergraduate students to help identify genetic factors that are associated with regional brain activities in the context of smoking addiction.
David is an MD/PhD student and is now completing the remaining two years of medical school at Dartmouth.
