A Hunter alumna whose early work on leukemia spanned laboratories at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Boston Children’s Hospital has been named to the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation’s SPARK Scholars Program.
Hunter-Macaulay Honors College alumna Subyeta Chowdhury ’25 will work with her mentor, Dr. Ross L. Levine, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in the one-year cancer research internship for post-baccalaureate scholars.
Launched in 2023, the program provides promising young talent with rigorous scientific training and a network of mentors and peers to support their next steps into graduate school and beyond. Each scholar receives a stipend of up to $50,000, along with a living allowance and a travel stipend. During the year, unique programming fosters community among the cohort and strengthens the skills needed for a research career.
Born and raised in New York City, Chowdhury earned a BA in biological sciences with a minor in public health. At Hunter, she did research at Levine’s Memorial Sloan Kettering lab, where she contributed to projects on acute myeloid leukemia.
In the summer of 2024, she deepened her research experience as a Harvard-Amgen Scholar at Boston Children’s Hospital, studying clonal hematopoiesis in the lab of Dr. Vijay G. Sankaran. Her research efforts were recognized with the Horace W. Goldsmith Scholar Award from Macaulay Honors College. In her free time, she enjoys exploring New York City, building Legos, and unwinding with a good movie.
Chowdhury is the third Hunter alumna picked as a Damon Runyon Scholar. Sangita Chakraborty ’24 and Jayati Mondal ’24 were among the first cohort.
Founded in 1946 to memorialize the iconic journalist Damon Runyon, who died of throat cancer, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has invested some $450 million and funded some 4,000 scientists, according to its literature.
