The Meyer Physician Scientist Bridge Award

The transition from clinical training to junior faculty is among the most challenging periods in the career trajectory of physician-scientists. During this phase, they must simultaneously generate preliminary data, establish research credibility, and develop a competitive training award application, all while often needing to justify their salaries through increased clinical responsibilities. These competing demands can hinder the time and focus required to establish research independence. The Meyer Cancer Center Physician-Scientist Bridge Award aims to mitigate this barrier by providing up to two years of dedicated funding to support focused research activity and career development.

The overarching goal of the Meyer Cancer Center Physician-Scientist Bridge Award is to provide time-limited funding to enable talented, motivated, and academically accomplished early-career physician-scientists to gain critical experience and skills to generate preliminary data necessary for a successful NIH K-award or comparable foundation career development award application.

Congratulations to this year's winner, Dr. Franco Castillo Tokumori! 

 Franco Castillo Tokumori, M.D., is an Instructor in Medicine within the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine and Assistant Attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He treats patients with various blood conditions, with a special interest in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and hematopoiesis, which has been the primary focus of his research.

Dr. Castillo Tokumori received his M.D. from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in 2016. After graduating, he worked in his home university’s Pediatric Infectious Diseases Laboratory and completed a postgraduate Diploma in Immunology. He then completed his residency training in Internal Medicine (2022) at the University of South Florida, where he also served as chief resident. He completed his fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology (2025) at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian (WCM/NYP). He is a physician-scientist working closely with the Richard T. Silver MD Myeloproliferative Neoplasm (MPN) Center and the Dr. Joseph Scandura Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Castillo Tokumori’s laboratory and clinical research are focused on developing new methods to measure disease activity in MPNs. His main translational work has focused on single-cell techniques to assess clonal dynamics in MPNs.