Dr. Botchkarev received his PhD from Brandeis University in the summer of 2015. Dr. Botchkarev was first exposed to cancer biology while working toward his PhD where he studied the mechanisms by which the Polo-like kinase is regulated during the cell cycle under healthy and DNA damaged conditions. That work identified novel upstream regulators of the Polo kinase and a mechanism by which Polo is able to temporally target its late mitotic substrates.