Jenny Gumperz, PhD

During her time on the UW-Madison faculty, Jenny Gumperz directed a laboratory research program focused on using the powerful non-MHC restricted features of human innate-like T cells as off-the-shelf cellular immunotherapies for chronic viral infections and cancer. She has an excellent track record of obtaining extramural research funding, and she participate in the Head and Neck Cancer SPORE, the Wisconsin Blood Cancer Research Institute, the Cancer Virology focus group of the UW Carbone Cancer Center, and the Cellular Immunotherapy Network (CITN) at UW-Madison. She also has an excellent track-record of mentoring and training young scientists. Specifically, she had the great pleasure of training 8 Ph.D. students and 12 postdoctoral fellows, 3 of whom have gone on to become independent faculty members themselves, while many others have achieved senior positions in medicine and Biopharmaceutics/Biotechnology companies. She has served on many pre-doctoral, postdoctoral, and junior faculty mentoring committees, and she has hosted three international visiting scientists in her lab. She also has extensive experience mentoring trainees in regards to grant-writing and career development through serving as a mentor in the Mentoring to Achieve Research Independence (MATRIX) and the Science and Medicine Graduate Research Scholars (SciMed GRS) programs, and through serving for over 20 years as a grant reviewer on NIH study sections and on UW review panels for grants to foster research by undergraduates, new investigators, and established investigator collaborations. She has a strong commitment to promoting an inclusive and supportive scientific research environment for all trainees and staff, and has actively sought opportunities to train students from underrepresented groups (e.g. hosting underrepresented undergraduate students for summer research projects, and for independent study projects during the academic year) and have participated on professional development and career advice panels for LGBTQ scientists and others. She also continues to interact scientifically with many of the scientists for whom she served as a mentor. In summary, she has appropriate research expertise, a track record in obtaining extramural funding, and a substantial training history that allows me to be an effective leader of the Career Enhancement Program of the Wisconsin Head and Neck Cancer SPORE.