O’Neal Cancer Center Announces Recipients of the 2026 O’Neal NextGen Scholar Awards

The UAB O’Neal Cancer Center is pleased to announce the latest recipients of the O’Neal NextGen Scholar Awards. These awards are funded by the Young Supporters Board (YSB) of the O’Neal Cancer Center.

This year, Xin Liang received the YSB NextGen Award for her project, “Computational Methods for Spatiotemporal Characterization of Tumor Progression.”

Aniruddha Mukherjee received the Mary Ann Harvard NextGen Award for his project, “Investigating the Role of Cleaved ATP5A1 Proteoform in R-Loop Regulation in Cancer Cells.”

Stephen Opoku received the Jacob Baker NextGen Award for his project, “Spatiotemporal Regulation of Tumor Innervation and Growth by Neuritin-Expressing Regulatory T-Cells.”

In addition to these three awards, two more O’Neal NextGen Scholar Awards were funded through generous contributions from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama; read about these awards on our blog at https://www.onealcanceruab.org/news-and-events/news/2026-oneal-invests-bcrfa-funded.

The O’Neal NextGen Awards exist to enable promising predoctoral students and postdoctoral trainees to obtain mentored cancer research training from O’Neal Cancer Center faculty advisors, enhancing the awardee’s development into a productive, independent cancer researcher.

To learn more about the O’Neal NextGen Scholar Awards program, visit our website at https://www.onealcanceruab.org/research/funding-opportunities/. To learn more about the O’Neal Cancer Center YSB, visit https://www.onealcanceruab.org/about/leadership/young-supporters-board/.