Jill Bargonetti-Chavarria, who earned her biology degree at SUNY Purchase in 1985, has been named a Distinguished Professor by the City University of New York for her decades of breast cancer research at Hunter College.
The honor is CUNY's highest. The Board of Trustees reserves it for faculty whose work has achieved national and international recognition, and Bargonetti-Chavarria is now among that select group.
Hunter College announced the designation on June 29, and SUNY Purchase followed with its own announcement on Monday, Aug. 3, highlighting the alumna as a point of pride for the Harrison campus.
"Receiving the title of CUNY Distinguished Professor is an incredible honor, and I am so delighted to share it with the Hunter and CUNY communities I love so much," Bargonetti-Chavarria said in Hunter College's June 29 announcement.
From Purchase to the lab
At SUNY Purchase, Bargonetti-Chavarria double-majored in biology and dance. Before college, she danced with Dianne McIntyre's Sounds in Motion, a Harlem-based company. She went on to earn a PhD from New York University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University before joining Hunter College's faculty in 1994.
Since then, she has led the Bargonetti Lab, where her team studies the tumor suppressor protein p53 and how its mutations drive triple-negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat forms of the disease. Her work aims to identify biomarkers that can guide therapy and uncover new drug targets.
Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the American Cancer Society and the Department of Defense, and published in journals including Cell, Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She still brings dance into science. At Hunter, she developed a course called "Choreographing Genomics" that teaches genome information flow through postmodern dance movement.
NIH work and health disparities
In 2024 and 2025, Bargonetti-Chavarria participated in NIH-sponsored studies on cancer health disparities and cancer cell biology, and she has served on NIH's Board of Scientific Counselors. In a February 2024 post on the National Cancer Institute's blog, she described her team's work comparing oncogenic protein expression in breast cancer tissues from Black and white patients to investigate disparities in clinical outcomes.
She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of METAvivor, which focuses on advanced breast cancer awareness and equity in research.
A string of firsts
The CUNY honor adds to a list that includes the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Bill Clinton in 1997, the New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, the Outstanding Woman Scientist Award from the Association for Women in Science and induction into the Bronx High School of Science Hall of Fame. SUNY Purchase previously gave her its Presidential Distinguished Alumnae Award.
Harrison roots
SUNY Purchase sits in the hamlet of Purchase within the Town of Harrison. The college ranks among the top 10 public liberal arts colleges nationally for the percentage of graduates who earn PhDs, and its announcement framed Bargonetti-Chavarria's career as a reflection of the research foundation undergraduates build there through faculty-mentored projects.
No ceremony or public lecture tied to the honor has been announced yet. SUNY Purchase's fall 2026 semester begins in late August.
