Abhi Patel is a physician-scientist with clinical expertise in radiation oncology and a scientific background in nucleic acid biochemistry.  He grew up in Toronto, Canada and came to Yale as an undergraduate.  He obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry, studying thermodynamic aspects of organic crystal formation with Professor J. Michael McBride.  He then entered Yale’s M.D./Ph.D. program and conducted graduate research in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, studying mechanisms of RNA splicing under the mentorship of Professor Joan A. Steitz.  He completed a medical internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and then completed residency training in radiation oncology at Harvard.  During residency, he performed research in the laboratory of Professor Jack W. Szostak, developing methods to enable in vivo selection of nucleic acid aptamers targeted to tumor vasculature.  He returned to Yale as a faculty member in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology, where he maintains an active clinical practice and leads translational research efforts in his laboratory.