I am a Physician-Scientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center. My research is dedicated to the development of next-generation adoptive cellular immunotherapies to improve outcomes for patients with cancer, with a particular focus on solid tumors. My scientific expertise spans tumor immunology, cellular therapy, and cancer biology, with an emphasis on engineering immune effector cells to overcome immunosuppressive mechanisms within the solid tumor microenvironment. My research program has focused on developing and optimizing CAR-engineered immune cells for solid tumors. This work has resulted in multiple next-generation cellular therapy products and has led to high-impact publications in Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, and Cancer Discovery. Most recently, my mechanistic studies identified a transcriptional checkpoint “CREM” that limits CAR-NK cell persistence and function within the tumor microenvironment (Rafei et al., Nature, 2025). My research has been supported by funding from the NIH, Department of Defense, ASCO, and multiple institutional grants, enabling systematic interrogation of tumor microenvironment-associated barriers—such as hypoxia, acidosis, and cellular exhaustion—in the tumor microenvironment. Through this work, I aim to overcome critical barriers to cellular immunotherapy and expand treatment options for patients with refractory solid tumors.