Anna Ralser, MD, PhD Parker Scholar Biography Anna Ralser, MD, PhD, is a postdoc in the lab of Karin Pelka, PhD, at Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Ralser’s focus is on spatially organized multicellular interaction networks between immune and malignant cells that were recently discovered in human colorectal cancer by Dr. Pelka and others. Dr. Ralser aims to improve responsiveness to cancer immunotherapy by elucidating mechanisms accounting for the spatio-temporal coordination between those cellular hubs by combining high-plex in situ hybridization with CRISPR-based perturbation studies and innovative computational approaches under co-mentorship of Barbara Engelhardt, PhD. During her MD/PhD studies at the Technical University of Munich, Dr. Ralser investigated the interplay of cellular compartments in H. pylori-driven CRC using cutting-edge technologies such as scRNAseq and in-depth histologic monitoring of cellular phenotypes in their local environment. View Dr. Ralser’s YouTube Short. Education & Training 2023-Present: Postdoctoral Researcher, Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology, San Francisco 2022: MD and PhD, Technical University of Munich, Germany 2017: Medical Degree, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria Awards & Honors 2023: Parker Scholar