About Us

Graduate Student Positions (PhD or MD/PhD)

The Youngblood Lab at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine welcomes inquiries from motivated PhD and MD/PhD students interested in joining our research program. We study the molecular mechanisms driving brain tumor growth, aggressiveness and treatment resistance, and work to translate these discoveries into better therapies for patients.

Students may pursue projects in any of our core areas (tumor immunology and immunotherapy; cancer epigenetics and experimental therapeutics), spanning meningioma, glioma and other central nervous system tumors. Depending on interest, projects can be primarily wet-lab (molecular biology, immunology, preclinical modeling), computational (epigenomic and sequencing analysis, spatial and single-cell data, R/Python/HPC) or a combination of the two.

We are committed to training the next generation of scientists and to providing a supportive, rigorous and collaborative environment in which students can grow into independent investigators.

Prospective students should have a strong interest in cancer biology, neuro-oncology or translational research and enthusiasm for both discovery and its clinical application. Interested students (including those considering a lab rotation) are encouraged to reach out. Please send a brief statement of your research interests and a current CV to Mark Youngblood at mark.youngblood@nm.org.

We welcome opportunities to collaborate with other labs and clinical teams on brain tumor genomics, immunotherapy and liquid biopsy research. Please contact us using our general lab information above.