Featured Photo caption: (Left to right) Ellen Kephart, Kevin Karplus, Andrew Blair, Rob Currie, Vinay Poodari and Mark Akeson went bald in 2017, helping raise more than $12,000 for Treehouse’s Brave the Shave Fundraiser, sponsored by the Genomics Institute
Author: Manpreet Kaur
As Treehouse gears up for another #BravetheShave event for St. Baldrick’s, we’d like to highlight some of our outstanding shavees from the previous year. A diverse group of individuals including students, professors, and researchers, came out to support the funding of pediatric cancer research.
Arjun Rao was a graduate student at UCSC when he developed his ProTECT pipeline for use in predicting T-cell epitopes for cancer therapy. His ProTECT pipeline was originally conceived for use on pediatric patient data to help physicians find immunotherapy treatments, which then progressed to being broadly applied to all types of cancer. At a 2016 fundraising event, Arjun shared that when he heard Katrina Learned speak about Aurora’s pediatric cancer at our first fundraiser in 2014, he was inspired to focus on pediatric cancer for his Ph.D..
Aurora’s cousin and Katrina’s nephew, Kian Witten-Hannah, marked his first year as a shavee in 2017 and is excited to shave again this coming year.
Professor Kevin Karplus of the Biomolecular Engineering department negotiated with students and faculty to raise a startling amount of money in return for shaving his head, eyebrows and beard! Along with Professor Karplus, Professor Mark Akeson returned for a second year to shave his head.
Rob Currie and Ellen Kephart are both Treehouse software engineers that also jumped in on the fun last year. Ellen was our only female participant in 2017!
We’re excited for the 2018 #BravetheShave event and we want you to join! If you would like to sign up to be a shavee, donate, or get involved, visit stbaldricks.org/events/UCSC2018.
 

Arjun Sao.

Arjun Sao, 2017 Brave the Shave event.


Kian, Katrina's nephew.

Kian Witten-Hannah, 2017 Brave the Shave event.