Dr. Furberg-Barnes is a molecular epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center(MSK) who conducts research to identify factors associated with genitourinary cancer etiology and prognosis. She is currently investigating the impact of post-diagnosis smoking exposure on non-muscle invasive bladder cancer recurrence risk, and also the seemingly paradoxical association between obesity and improved clinical outcomes among kidney cancer patients. These research topics were motivated by her interactions with her physician-scientists colleagues at MSK who are eager to have empirical data to relay to patients about what they can do to optimize prognosis.

Her newly funded R01 research project, titled "Body composition and the obesity paradox in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC)," will be the first large-scale investigation to link body composition features (i.e., skeletal muscle and adipose tissues) derived from pre-surgical CT scans with tumor subtype data and survival information. This project has the potential to determine the relative contribution of body composition and molecular tumor features on ccRCC prognosis and to identify novel transcriptomic signatures of survival.