After being renewed for an additional five-year cycle by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) earlier this year, the UW Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) program is proud to announce its 2025–27 cohort of scholars. They are:
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- Minh Tung Phung, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health
Project: “Functional status and treatment outcomes among older women with ovarian cancer” - María Virumbrales-Muñoz, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Project: “Development of a human engineered model of ovarian cancer for translational studies” - Wenhui Zhou, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology
Project: “Integrating multimodal data for classification of ductal carcinoma in situ using deep learning”
- Minh Tung Phung, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health
From left to right: new scholars Minh Tung Phung, María Virumbrales-Muñoz, and Wenhui Zhou
All three are based in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and began two-year appointments on Nov. 1, 2025. Scholars will receive interdisciplinary mentoring, curricular, and research support to advance their research careers in women’s health. They join a rich community of alumni that spans nine different departments and six schools across campus.
Created by the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, BIRCWH is a faculty early career development award for scholars focused on women’s health and/or sex differences research. The program fosters a scientific workforce equipped to lead independently funded research programs focused on improving women’s health. It is administered by the Department of Radiology in partnership with the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.
BIRCWH is one of only three NIH-funded institutional K career development grants on the UW–Madison campus. (K awards are aimed at researchers who are earlier in their careers, and they provide support for mentored research career development experiences.)
Program alumni have a strong track record of achieving independent research funding, with a majority of previous scholars going on to receive R01 or R01-equivalent grant funding. They have become leaders in their fields, achieving national and international recognition.
Open to faculty across UW–Madison, the program is enriched by an interdisciplinary network of over 40 mentors and a seven-member Interdisciplinary Advisory Committee.
The next program recruitment cycle is expected to open in 2027. Visit the BIRCWH webpage to learn more about the program. Congratulations to the new scholar cohort!