University Park, Pa. – Penn State Graduate School alumnus Sounak Gupta has received the Graduate School Alumni Society (GSAS) Early Career Award. This award recognizes alumni who have demonstrated exceptional success in their chosen field within the first ten years after obtaining their graduate degree.
Gupta is a senior associate consultant in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and Division of Laboratory Genetics and Genomics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He has received national and international recognition for his contributions to the field of urologic and molecular pathology.
Initially, Gupta’s research involved studies of protein translation in the context of monogenic diabetes and bladder cancer, and he maintained an interest in urologic neoplasia during his residency and fellowship training.
Gupta’s work on identifying novel TFEB gene alterations in renal cancer was recognized with awards presented by the International Society of Urological Pathology, and United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology.
Gupta’s most recent work has focused on characterizing molecular signatures of sarcomatoid renal cell carcinomas, an aggressive tumor type, that have the potential to predict exceptional response to immunotherapy.
Gupta has presented his research in more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and at numerous national and international conferences and meetings.
Before coming to Penn State, Gupta attended medical school at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, in India. He received his doctoral degree in molecular medicine from Penn State in 2010.
Gupta completed postdoctoral fellowships in cancer biology at the Cleveland Clinic and University of California, San Diego. He then underwent medical residency training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education.
Gupta later completed clinical fellowships in molecular genetic pathology and genitourinary pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He joined the staff at the Mayo Clinic in July 2019.
For his accomplishments, Gupta was recognized during the annual Graduate School Alumni Recognition Ceremony in March.