Why I Chose Cancer Over Computer Chips

By Jeffrey Jensen, MD, PhD
UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
LCI Career Development Award Recipient, 2026

I decided to become an oncologist and cancer researcher when I was an undergraduate at Stanford University. My friends were all designing computer chips and writing computer programs, but I thought that cancer was a serious problem that deserved more effort.

After Stanford, I moved to cow country for eight years, completing the Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD) at UW-Madison. From there, I spent six more years in the Physician Scientist Training Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing an internal medicine residency and a clinical medical oncology fellowship focused on lung cancer patients.

Through all of that schooling — and the academic papers, presentations, and two advanced degrees that came with it — the first grant I ever received was the Lung Cancer Initiative’s Research Fellow Award. That grant gave me the data I needed to compete successfully for the ASCO Young Investigator Award, internal awards at UNC, and most recently the Lung Cancer Initiative’s Career Development Award.

That funding has since led to real results: my research has identified a therapeutic target in a rare form of lung cancer called NUT carcinoma, and we’re now working to translate this discovery into new immunotherapy treatments for lung cancer patients. If you’d like to see our work, you can find it in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer under the title “Shared PRAME Epitopes are T-cell Targets in NUT Carcinoma,” with the Lung Cancer Initiative acknowledged in the credits.

Cancer researchers need your help now more than ever. The donations you give to the Lung Cancer Initiative matter, and the research done with these funds changes lives. Consider if there is more that you can do to help lung cancer patients today — and I will do the same. Thank you to all of you who have already given, and I look forward to seeing you at the next LUNGe Forward 5K, where I will be “running.”