Featured Alumni

Dr. Mark Gonzalgo

Dr. Mark Gonzalgo is Professor and Vice Chair of Urology at the Desai Sethi Urology Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Executive Director of Perioperative Surgical Services, University of Miami Health System. He is also Director of the Urologic Oncology Fellowship Program and serves on the Education Council of the American Urological Association.
Dr. Gonzalgo is a urologic oncologist with expertise in open and robotic surgical approaches for the treatment of prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers. He is a recognized expert in DNA methylation and is particularly interested in developing new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for cancer detection and treatment. His research in understanding the molecular biology of cancer including research and patents in the methylation field have been used by laboratories around the world. He has served as PI, Co-I, and collaborator on grants from the NIH, DOD, various foundations, and industry. His mentorship of graduate students led to the founding of Gauss Surgical, a company (acquired by Stryker) focused on quantifying blood loss using the world’s first FDA-approved computer vision and machine learning platform for the operating room. Dr. Gonzalgo has been recognized as a Top Doctor by U.S. News & World Report and is an emeritus member.

Dr. Tanja Gruber

Dr. Tanja Gruber was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry and B.S. in Biology from the University of Washington and then entered the M.D. Ph.D. program at the University of Southern California. Her Ph.D. studies were done in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology under the mentorship of Donald B. Kohn and focused on the immunogenicity of BCR-ABL1 driven acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Following the completion of her doctorate degrees, she completed her pediatric internship, residency, and fellowship in hematology oncology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She then went on to accept a position at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as a physician scientist in the Department of Oncology. Dr. Gruber established an active laboratory research program studying high risk pediatric leukemias, using next generation sequencing to characterize these malignancies at the genomic level and high throughput drug screening to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities. Her drug screening efforts identified an active combination for infantile acute lymphoblastic leukemia which led her to take on an active role at St. Jude as a clinical investigator. She has developed and activated several multi-institutional therapeutic trials in pediatric leukemia that span newly diagnosed and relapsed disease including a treatment protocol for newly diagnosed infants with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (NCT02553460). In August of 2020 Dr. Gruber became the Chief of Pediatric Hematology Oncology Stem Cell Transplant and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University where she also serves as the Director of the Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and the Associate Director for Childhood Cancer at the Stanford Cancer Institute.

Dr. Alan Yang

Dr. Alan Yang is the Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Xencor. Dr. Yang joined Xencor as senior vice president and chief medical officer in December 2019. Previously he served as senior vice president, head of clinical development and acting chief medical officer at Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Before assuming this role at Jazz, Dr. Yang was the therapeutic area head for hematology and oncology, assembling its clinical development team and overseeing several oncology products, including Erwinaze®, Defitelio® and Vyxeos®. Prior to Jazz, Dr. Yang led clinical development and clinical operations groups at Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, where he was vice president of clinical research. Previously, he held several roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen, including those of global development leader for Aranesp® in oncology and clinical research medical director for Blincyto®, the first bispecific antibody approved by the FDA. Before transitioning to the biopharmaceutical industry, Dr. Yang practiced medicine for several years as an academic oncologist at the University of Southern California, where he led a translational cancer research laboratory. Dr. Yang earned a B.A. in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and an M.D. from the University of Southern California. He completed his medical oncology fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.