Robert E. Van Sciver received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2005 from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, VA. He worked for a small biopharmaceutical startup company and as a research technician at UVA for several years before pursuing his PhD training. Robert is currently a 5th-year Biomedical Sciences PhD student in Dr. Amy H. Tang’s laboratory at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk, VA. Mr. Van Sciver participated in the Histochemical Society’s Immunohistochemistry and Microscopy (IHCM) short course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA in 2015. He has applied the knowledge and training obtained at this intense short course to his dissertation research investigating the role of Seven-IN-Absentia (SINA) E3 ligase in Drosophila development and tumor growth. By carrying out immunofluorescent studies on tissues microdissected from Drosophila larvae, he is able to delineate the role of SINA in regulating RAS signal transduction, cell growth, differentiation, migration, focal adhesions, and apoptosis. In human cancers, SINA homologs (SIAHs) are a viable and logical target to control and eradicate “undruggable” oncogenic K-RAS-driven cancer, a notion supported by strong molecular evidence in evolutionary biology and developmental biology. Robert is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation and finishing two manuscripts and two reviews as he actively pursues academic postdoctoral opportunities where he will expand his extensive expertise in multidisciplinary areas in genetics, cell biology, immunohistochemistry, biochemistry, microsurgery, and microscopy. In the end, Mr. Robert Van Sciver aims to become an independent principal investigator (PI) and a tenure-track faculty mentor in academia in the future.