Qi Chen, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Women's and Children's Health, has been awarded the Dimitris N. Chorafas Prize 2026. The prize of USD 10,000 is intended for recent PhD graduates or doctoral students in their final year of doctoral studies. The aim is to encourage young, promising researchers. In her thesis, she demonstrates how modern analytical methods can provide new insights into how children's immune systems develop and respond to illness.
Qi Chen, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Women's and Children's Health, is awarded the prize for her thesis Systems-level immunomonitoring in pediatric cancer and early life development .
In a widely noted study published in Cell, she shows that tumour type-rather than age-drives immune responses in paediatric cancer, a finding that could influence future treatment strategies. She has also identified blood-based biomarkers that may improve diagnosis and monitoring of Hodgkin lymphoma in children.
Beyond cancer research, Qi has contributed to studies on early-life immune development, showing how the gut microbiome and nutrition shape immune function. Her work has been published in leading journals and is considered to have strong clinical relevance.
How do you feel about this recognition, Qi Chen?
"I feel very honoured and grateful to receive this recognition. It is particularly meaningful to me as it reflects not only my work during the PhD, but also the importance of research into children's health and immune development. I am very thankful to everyone who has supported me throughout my PhD, and this award is a great encouragement for me as I take the next step in my research career."
To be eligible for nomination for the Dimitris N. Chorafas Prize, candidates must not have reached the age of 32 at the time of nomination. The prize will be awarded in connection with the inauguration ceremony in October 2026 at Karolinska Institutet.
The jury's motivation
"Qi Chen has conducted a thesis entitled Systems-level immunomonitoring in pediatric cancer and early life development at the Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet. Her doctoral thesis represents a genuine and substantial contribution to the fields of paediatric immunology, cancer immunology, and early-life immune development, addressing a fundamental challenge in paediatric medicine: understanding how the immune system of a child, whether facing cancer, premature birth, or the critical first months of life responds, adapts, and can be therapeutically guided.
To do so, she has integrated results from a range of the most technically demanding approaches available in modern immunology including mass cytometry, plasma proteomics, bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing, T cell receptor sequencing and gut metagenomics. This has resulted in a series of high impact journal publications, including Cell, and has identified clinically actionable biomarkers with direct potential for translation into paediatric oncology practice publications describing results of considerable clinical translational importance."
