Christina Turn '13

Christina Turn, originally from Tampa, Florida, enrolled at the Wilkes Honors College in 2009 and graduated in 2013 with a concentration in Biology. While at the Honors College, Christina worked as a laboratory assistant at the Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and as a teaching assistant for introductory statistics. Outside of class, Christina volunteered extensively at the Children’s Cancer Center of Tampa and as an ESL teacher at El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center. 

 After graduation, she attended medical school at the University of Florida, from which she graduated in 2017 in the top 25% of her class. While in medical school, Christina was inducted into the only two medical honor societies currently in existence: Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She served as President of Community Service for the UF chapter of AOA and instituted several ongoing projects with the Gainesville community. She additionally was the Vice President of Community Service for the UF chapter of the American Medical Association, and several of her projects earned national grants and awards. Christina continued to conduct research in medical school and wrote several publications on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and lung inflammatory and fibrotic responses to stressors.

 After medical school, Christina proceeded to Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to complete her pediatric residency. During residency, she has honed her interest in medical education and humanism by volunteering as a mentor for undergraduate students and medical students alike, as well as by volunteering with the Stanford University chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. She has continued to pursue her longstanding interest in hematology/oncology by volunteering with the Hemophilia Foundation of Northern California and recently was the camp physician for Camp Hemotion 2019 and for Family Camp 2020. In residency, Christina has designed and implemented a clinical research project evaluating the ways in which chimeric antigen T-cell receptor therapy (CAR-T cell therapy) affects clones of leukemic cells in pediatric patients.

 Christina is delighted to be fulfilling the last step of her dream to treat pediatric patients with cancer and blood disorders in July 2020, when she will move to Pennsylvania to start pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.