Sarah Perlee, PhD
Program Manager, Life Sciences
Biography
Dr. Sarah Perlee is a Program Manager at The Pershing Square Foundation, where she supports life science initiatives, including the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance (PSSCRA) and the MIND Prize. In this role, she helps advance innovative scientific research by managing programs that fund early-career investigators and groundbreaking studies in cancer and neurodegenerative disease.
Before joining the Foundation, Dr. Perlee earned her PhD in Cancer Biology from the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Under the mentorship of Dr. Richard White (PSSCRA Prize winner, 2017), she used zebrafish as a model organism to investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying melanocyte and melanoma biology. Her research also focused on how the tumor microenvironment influences melanoma initiation and progression, contributing to a deeper understanding of cancer development.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Perlee worked as a research technician in Dr. Scott Armstrong’s lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she studied leukemia epigenetics. She holds a bachelor's degree in Molecular Genetics and Animal Science from the University of Vermont, where she developed her passion for biomedical research.