Asaf, a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Valhalla Fellow Kipp Weiskopf’s lab, is studying new immunotherapy strategies to treat cancer. He’s also a medical oncologist in the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center and Division of Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research focuses on using cytokines, which are signaling proteins that can regulate immune responses, for macrophage-based cancer immunotherapy. “Being a clinician-scientist leaves me little free time,” he explains, “but I really like playing basketball and I love learning languages.” At present, he is fluent in English, Hebrew, German, and Spanish — in which he’s a certified bilingual provider. “I can also get by fine in French, Portuguese, and Catalan. And I can have a simple conversation in Arabic and Russian.”