The KFO 5002 extends its congratulations to Atmika Paul for the exceptional achievement of receiving the grade summa cum laude honors for her doctoral thesis. This distinction is awarded only to those whose academic work demonstrates the highest level of excellence and reflects Atmika’s unwavering commitment, intellectual rigor, and passion for cancer research.

Atmika Paul received her master’s degree in Biological Sciences from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India, where she worked on molecular mechanisms driving cytoskeletal changes and EMT in breast cancer. After a short stint in Singapore, she was accepted into the MolBio IMPRS MS/PhD program in Göttingen.

Since 2020, Atmika has been part of the KFO 5002, working in the lab of Prof. Holger Bastians (SP6) in the Department of Molecular Oncology of the University Medical Center Göttingen. Here, she worked on deciphering the molecular mechanisms driving chromosomal instability in human pancreatic cancer. In particular, she mechanistically deciphered the link of SMAD4-deficiency, a frequent genetic alteration in pancreatic cancer, and chromosomal instability. Her findings characterize a pathway which drives a cancer cell phenotype of utmost importance both, for tumor progression and therapeutic susceptibility. While working on her PhD thesis, Atmika also presented her work at the FASEB aneuploidy conference, Boston, Massachusetts, USA and at the German Pancreatic Cancer Research Meeting, Göttingen, Germany. In addition, she was the co-recipient of the Best Poster Award of Second Scientific Retreat of the KFO 5002 in September 2022.

Since its inception, Atmika has served as one of two student representatives in the KFO 5002 steering committee. In that position, she has not only represented student interests in the decision-making process of the KFO 5002, but has also co-organized and co-chaired the Young Scientist Satellite Symposium of the Fourth German Pancreatic Cancer Research meeting in June 2024. Atmika also co-organized the KFO 5002 JournaLunch meetings and several other events for early career scientists in the KFO 5002.

The KFO 5002 is proud of Atmika Paul’s achievements and wishes her the best for her future career.