President

Tyler Jacks, PhD

Dr. Tyler Jacks, the President of Break Through Cancer, has dedicated his life to cancer research. He is the Founding Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology and Co-director of the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology. From 2001 – 2007, he served as director of the Koch Institute’s predecessor, the MIT Center for Cancer Research, and was a long-standing Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1994-2021). Dr. Jacks received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Harvard College, and his doctorate from the University of California, San Francisco, where he trained with Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute before joining the MIT faculty in 1992.

The Jacks laboratory at MIT’s Koch Institute studies the genetic events underlying the development of cancer. Dr. Jacks has pioneered the use of gene targeting technology in mice to study cancer-associated genes and to construct mouse models of many human cancer types, including cancers of the lung, pancreas, colon, thyroid, and soft tissue. These powerful, sophisticated models closely recapitulate human disease, and have led to novel insights into tumor development, as well as new strategies for cancer detection and treatment.

In recognition of his contributions to the study of cancer genetics, Dr. Jacks has received numerous awards, including the AACR Outstanding Achievement Award, the Amgen Award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research, and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and served as the organization’s President in 2009.

Dr. Jacks is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the AACR Academy. In 2015, Dr. Jacks received the Killian Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the MIT faculty can bestow upon one of its members. In 2016, Dr. Jacks co-chaired the Blue-Ribbon Panel for (then) Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. He was also chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute during the Obama administration.

Dr. Jacks serves on the Board of Directors of Amgen and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He co-founded T2 Biosystems and Dragonfly Therapeutics, where he also serves as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. He also is a member of the scientific advisory boards of Skyhawk Therapeutics, SQZ Biotech, the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and the Francis Crick Institute. Dr. Jacks is a member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers.

Program Administrator

Charlotte Abrecht

Charlotte Abrecht holds a BA in Biology from the College of the Holy Cross. She has previous experience in Immuno-oncology research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute doing human immune monitoring for clinical trials and work establishing mechanistic and biomarker endpoints for clinical studies.

Chief Science Officer

Jesse Boehm, PhD

Jesse Boehm is the Chief Science Officer of Break Through Cancer and maintains a research lab focused on bringing the power of functional genomics to bear on living samples from cancer patients with particular emphasis on rare and underrepresented tumors.

Before joining Break Through Cancer, Jesse spent 14 years in the Broad Institute’s Cancer Program, most recently as an Institute Scientist and Scientific Director of the Cancer Dependency Map project. As the Director of the Broad’s Cancer Model Development Center (part of the National Cancer Institute’s Human Cancer Models Initiative), he led his laboratory in developing a scalable capacity to convert patient tumors into organoids and other cell models. Prior, he was the recipient of a Broad Institute Merkin Fellowship and the Associate Director of the Broad’s Cancer Program. In these leadership roles, he drove the scientific planning and strategic execution of a diverse set of program projects, collaborations, and activities for over a decade.

Propelling the “cancer research ecosystem of the future” to benefit patients as rapidly as possible is his ultimate professional passion and ambition.

Jesse received his BS in biology from MIT and his PhD from Harvard University, Division of Medical Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Data Science Engineer

Nicole Buechler

Nicole Buechler is a Data Science Engineer at Break Through Cancer. She studied Biology and Public Health, launching her career as a Harvard Research Assistant for a longitudinal woman and child health study. She gravitated towards data management and taught herself programming, transitioning into Data Engineering at a number of health technology startups. At Break Through Cancer, she builds out the Data Science Hub infrastructure and supports researchers in their data efforts.

Project Coordinator

Ineke Ceder

Ineke Ceder has extensive experience in project coordination, honed over two decades at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College managing a variety of social science research projects, and later at MIT as Senior Program Administrator focusing on the internal programs of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. She serves on the advisory board of Parent Artist Advocacy League, supporting work focused on employment equity in the arts world. Ineke holds a BA in English and Dutch from the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Scientific Portfolio Manager

Lucian de Waal, PhD

Lucian brings over a decade of small molecule oncology research experience to BTC. During his stay at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, C4 Therapeutics, and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, he has focused on large scale viability screens, target identification and chemical biology approaches. During his last role at The Broad Institute, Lucian was leading multiple drug discovery and technology development eKorts, working across disciplines and research institutes. He joins BTC as a Scientific Portfolio Manager to instill the values and benefits of scientific collaboration and interdisciplinary research teams and help guide the scientific process. Lucian was born and raised in the Netherlands but has called the Boston area his home since 2011. He has enjoyed his education at Utrecht University for his B.S., M.S., and PhD.

Henry Dewhurst

Together with the rest of the BTC Data Science Team and broader Data Science Hub, Henry engineers solutions for data sharing, analysis, and discovery across BTC TeamLabs.

Sr. Administrative and Development Coordinator

Michaela Forand

Michaela Forand holds a BA in Communication and a BS in Human Development & Family Studies from the University of New Hampshire. She has previous experience in non-profit development and events. She has been a dedicated lifelong volunteer to many non-profits, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Make a Wish Foundation.

Director, Strategic Alliances

Jon Grabenstatter, PhD

Jon Grabenstatter is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Break Through Cancer. He has more than a decade of experience across the biotechnology, consulting and banking industries. He most recently served as an external innovation lead at BioNTech. Previously, he built startups with Flagship Pioneering, working in discovery sciences, alliance management, and business development. He holds a PhD in biochemistry from MIT.

Chief Financial Officer

Bill Hulme

Bill Hulme has extensive finance and accounting experience having worked for 25 years for Procter and Gamble in a multitude of roles in both the US and Costa Rica. Most recently he served as a consultant for Deloitte and as a controller for Winter Wyman. Bill has a BS in Accounting from Southern New Hampshire University.

Managing Director of Development

Terry McGowan

Terry McGowan has over 20 years of senior development experience at leading academic medical centers and foundations, including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Mass General Brigham. Terry’s philanthropic expertise focuses on supporting medical research program start-ups and multi-institutional research collaborations. He holds a BA in Healthcare Administration from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.

Chief Communications Officer

Kari McHugh

Kari McHugh has spent more than 20 years working in Communications and Strategic Philanthropy. Most recently she held dual roles at Dunkin’ Brands, home of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. At Dunkin’ Brands, Kari was the Executive Director of the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation and leader of the Consumer and Community Relations Team. Kari brings a unique talent for solving problems and finding innovative solutions to engage key stakeholders in both the corporate and non-profit sectors.

Kari has created more than a dozen public and private charities, including several award-winning corporate philanthropy programs. In addition, Kari is the Board Chair for Rett’s Roost, is on the corporate council for Perkins School for the Blind and is the President of both the Nurses Fund and the Michael C. McHugh Memorial Foundation. Kari graduated with a Joint Honors Masters in Philosophy and International Relations from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Chief Data Officer

Michael Noble

With more than two decades expertise as a creator and operational leader of high-throughput, interdisciplinary data analysis, and engineering systems in multiple domains (cancer genomics, astrophysics, and immunology), Michael has been on the front line of some of the most impactful scientific projects of the 20th century, including the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype and Tissue Expression (GTEx).  Holding a BS degree in pure mathematics and an MS in computer science, Michael has been lead- or co-author on more than a dozen grants at MIT, The Broad Institute, and Harvard Center for Astrophysics, which have collectively generated tens of millions in funding, hundreds of publications, many petabytes of data accessed across the world, and 105K citations.

Scientific Portfolio Manager

John BA Okello, PhD, MBA

John B. A. Okello, PhD, MBA, serves as a Scientific Portfolio Manager at Break Through Cancer, bringing extensive expertise in scientific research, strategic management, and healthcare leadership. Rooted in molecular biology, genetics, and rare inherited diseases research, John earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from Makerere University. He furthered his expertise with a postdoc at McMaster University and, more recently, earned an MBA through the MIT Sloan Fellows Program at the Sloan School of Management, with an MIT Healthcare Certificate.

Before joining Break Through Cancer, John played pivotal roles in leading academic medical research institutions, including SickKids Hospital and Queen’s University Cancer Research Institute in Canada. His background involved benchwork, bioinformatics, and research management, including fostering complex biomedical research collaborations and translation.

Committed to scientific program management, strategic vision, and transformative healthcare initiatives, John is passionate about contributing to Break Through Cancer’s mission and its dedication to facilitating impactful advancements in the fight against cancer through radical research collaboration.

Strategic Operations and Events Manager

Meredith Sandiford

Meredith Sandiford has spent much of her career in operations and event planning for various organizations including Golden Seeds, The Capital Network, and MassChallenge. She holds a BS in Animal Science from Texas A&M University and a Master’s of International Business from Northeastern University.

Senior Director of Science Programs

Christy Schultz, MBA

Christy Schultz is the Senior Director of Science Programs at Break Through Cancer. Christy has over sixteen years of experience working with mission-driven organizations in healthcare, higher education, and philanthropy. Christy has extensive expertise in project management and is passionate about leading strategic initiatives through collaboration. Previously, she was at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), where she spearheaded complex, department-wide programs as the Director of Pharmacy Operations and Planning. Prior to joining DFCI, Christy was with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute where she managed science education grant-making activities. This included the oversight of a program that placed exemplary students into research laboratories for summer research experiences overseen by prominent scientists.

She holds a BA in art history from Hood College and an MBA from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Chief Operating Officer and Chief Philanthropy Officer

Lisa Schwarz

Over the last thirty years, Lisa Schwarz has raised philanthropic support for numerous institutions including MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Johns Hopkins University. She holds a BA in art history and communications from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and an MPA from New York University.

Scientific Portfolio Manager

Derek Simon, PhD

Derek Simon is a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology and certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with 10+ years of biomedical research experience and 6+ years of project management experience for the U.S. federal government. He joined Break Through Cancer as a Scientific Portfolio Manager in July 2023 and he is thrilled to support the TeamLabs to advance important scientific discoveries in the fight against cancer.

Data Science Engineer

Jen Yao

Jen is a Data Science Engineer at Break Through Cancer.

The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins

William G. (Bill) Nelson, V, MD, PhD

Chairman of the Board, Break Through Cancer; Marion I. Knott Director

Bill Nelson is the Marion I. Knott Professor of Oncology and Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. He currently holds Professorships in Oncology, Medicine, Pharmacology, Pathology, Radiation Oncology, Urology, and Environmental Health Sciences. His laboratory research work has focused on cancer epigenetics, new cancer drug discovery, and prostate cancer.
Outside of Johns Hopkins, Bill is a recognized leader in cancer research, organizing national and international meetings in cancer health disparities, in cancer prevention, and in prostate cancer; serving on the Board and as Scientific Director of the V Foundation, as a Scientific Co-Chair for Stand Up 2 Cancer, and on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Prostate Cancer Foundation; and working as Executive Editor of Cancer Today, and as a Senior Editor of Cancer Research and of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Owner of eleven issued patents, he is a co-founder of Digital Harmonics and of Brahm Astra Therapeutics, and a Board Member of Armis Biopharma.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Lisa M. DeAngelis, MD

Chief Physician Executive and Chief Medical Officer

Lisa M. DeAngelis, MD, is Chief Physician Executive and Chief Medical Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). She oversees all clinical services, research, medical education, and multi-center collaborations for MSK, including the 500-bed Memorial Hospital, 13 outpatient facilities in New York City, and seven regional care sites across New York and New Jersey.
Lisa is an internationally recognized expert in brain cancer and the neurological complications of cancer treatment, including cognitive impairment and stroke.  During her thirty-year tenure at MSK, she served as chair of the Department of Neurology from 1997 to 2018, and co-founded MSK’s Brain Tumor Center, where experts from across MSK work to bring new discoveries from the lab to patients as quickly as possible.
Lisa’s own research has focused on primary brain tumors and she has led several clinical trials that investigate new tumor therapies. She also helped develop the current regimen to treat primary central nervous system lymphoma.
She is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 130 book chapters and has written or edited eight books. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Neurological Association (ANA) and former Vice Chair of the Board. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), which in 2019 awarded her the organization’s highest honor, the Wartenberg lecture.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Giulio F. Draetta, MD, PhD

Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer

Giulio Draetta is senior vice president and chief scientific officer at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a professor of Genomic Medicine and holds the Sewell Family Chair in Genomic Medicine, with a joint appointment as professor of Molecular and Cellular Oncology. He also co-leads MD Anderson’s Moon Shots Program®, a bold initiative aimed at rapidly and substantially reducing deaths to several high-mortality cancers. As chief scientific officer, Giulio champions innovation, develops strong partnerships and provides focused leadership on the basic science and clinical translation of research programs across the institution. He leads the regulatory infrastructure related to research finance, research integrity and protocol governance. His research focuses on mechanisms of disease in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma.
Giulio earned his medical and postgraduate degrees from the University of Naples Medical School, Italy. Before joining MD Anderson in 2011, he was a Dana-Farber Presidential Scholar, and chief research business development officer and deputy director of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
He has held appointments at Pharmacia and Merck, as vice president and as worldwide head of oncology drug discovery, respectively. He has served as an investigator at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany; and the European Institute of Oncology. During his time in academia, Giulio spearheaded fundamental research in the biology of the eukaryotic cell division cycle and of DNA damage-induced checkpoints. His research led to discovery of the first mammalian cyclin-dependent kinase and demonstrated that cyclin-dependent kinases and cyclins physically interact and regulate multiple cell cycle transitions in eukaryotes.
He was co-founder and vice president of research for Mitotix, where he established programs in cancer, inflammation and infectious diseases that led to successful partnerships with several pharmaceutical companies. He headed numerous drug discovery and development programs, which led to two drug approvals in recent years. He co-founded Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc., which focused on the development of selective inhibitors of nuclear export in oncology and other disease indications.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Laurie Glimcher, MD

President and Chief Executive Officer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Director, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center

Laurie H. Glimcher, MD is the President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Director of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Previously, she was the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean and Professor of Medicine of Weill Cornell Medicine and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University.
She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the former President of the American Association of Immunologists. She is a member of the Cancer Research Institute, Prix Galien, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Repare Therapeutics, Abpro Therapeutics, Kaleido BioSciences, Inc. Scientific Advisory Boards, the Lasker Award Jury, the American Association for Cancer Research, Association of American Cancer Institutes, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology and served on the Vice President’s Blue Ribbon panel. Laurie previously served on the Board of Directors of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Corporation and the Waters Corporation.  She currently serves on the boards of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Corporation and Analog Devices, Inc.
Laurie’s research identified key transcriptional regulators of protective immunity and the origin of pathophysiologic immune responses underlying autoimmune, infectious and malignant diseases. Dr. Glimcher speaks nationally and internationally on cancer, immunology, and translational medicine and has contributed more than 350 scholarly articles and papers to the medical literature.
Laurie has been a staunch proponent of improved access to care, health policy, and medical education, while simultaneously serving as a pioneering mentor and role model for cancer research trainees and for all women in science. Notably, she was the first female to be appointed as dean of Weill Cornell Medicine and is the first female President and Chief Executive Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research

Alice Goodwin

Trustee
After attending Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA, Alice T. Goodwin went on to receive a BS in Medical Technology from the Medical College of Virginia. She is a member of the Vestry at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and has served on several community boards including The Virginia Home (past president), the MCV Foundation and the Massey Cancer Center Advisory Board.  In her spare time, she enjoys playing tennis and golf.  Alice and Bill Goodwin married in 1966. They have five children and thirteen grandchildren.
Over the years, Alice and Bill have together received several awards and recognitions including the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor for Philanthropy and The Distinguished Virginian Award from NCCJ Virginia.  They were also chosen as Individual Philanthropists of the Year by the Central Virginia Chapter of the National Society of Fundraising Executives.  In addition, Alice is a recipient of the Outstanding Women Award from the YWCA of Richmond and Mary Baldwin University’s Bertie Murphy Deming Distinguished Service Award.  She also proudly served as the Christmas Mother of Richmond in 2009.

Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research

William H. Goodwin, Jr

Trustee
Bill Goodwin is the Retired Chairman of CCA Industries, Inc. and The Riverstone Group, LLC.  CCA is a diversified holding company, which oversees The Riverstone Group and its business interests, including Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Kiawah Island, SC), Sea Pines Resort (Hilton Head, SC) and The Jefferson Hotel (Richmond, VA).  He received a BSME from Virginia Tech in 1962 and an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at UVA in 1966.  In addition to his business endeavors, Bill has held many notable board positions including the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, where he served as Rector from 2015-2017, and the National Cancer Advisory Board.  In his spare time, Bill enjoys playing golf and duck hunting.
Bill has been the recipient of numerous honors including the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters Award from both Johns Hopkins University and Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Tech Alumni Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award.  Bill was recently inducted into Virginia Tech’s Academy of Engineering Excellence and was chosen as the 2020 Virginian of the Year by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Broad Institute

William C. Hahn, MD, PhD

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Institute Member, Broad Institute

Bill Hahn is the William Rosenberg Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Bill has made numerous discoveries that have informed our current molecular understanding of cancer and have formed the foundation of new translational studies. Bill and his colleagues helped demonstrate that activation of the reverse transcriptase telomerase plays an essential role in malignant transformation. This observation provided the means to create novel experimental model systems to identify and characterize the cooperative genetic interactions that lead to malignant transformation. Together with his colleagues at the Broad Institute, he helped develop genome scale tools and technology to perform somatic cell genetics in human cells. His laboratory has pioneered the use of integrated functional genomic approaches to identify and validate cancer targets. The tools, models and approaches that his laboratory has developed are widely used worldwide to discover and validate molecularly targeted cancer therapies. Bill and his collaborators are now engaged in clinical trials testing whether inhibition both of new oncogenes or synthetic lethal partners identified by these approaches will lead to clinical responses.
He has served as the President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has been elected to the Association of American Physicians. Bill has been the recipient of many honors and awards including the Wilson S. Stone Award from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center for outstanding research in cancer (2000), a Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute (2001), the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2010), the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from AACR (2015) and the Claire and Richard Morse Award (2019).

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Susan Hockfield, PhD

President Emerita

Susan Hockfield is President Emerita, Professor of Neuroscience, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2004 to 2012 she served as the sixteenth President of MIT, the first life scientist and first woman in that role.
As President, Susan strengthened the foundations of MIT’s finances and campus planning while advancing Institute-wide programs in sustainable energy and the convergence of the life, physical and engineering sciences, with impact across the region, the nation and around the world. She helped shape national policy for energy and next-generation manufacturing, appointed by President Obama in 2011 to co-chair the steering committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and by serving as a member of a Congressional Commission evaluating the Department of Energy laboratories in 2015.
As a biologist, she pioneered the use of monoclonal antibody technology in brain research, identifying proteins through which neural activity early in life effect brain development. Before joining MIT as its president, she was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1998-2002), and Provost (2003-2004) at Yale University. In all her roles, she has advanced opportunities for women and minorities.
She studied at the University of Rochester and Georgetown University and carried out research at the NIH and UCSF before joining the faculty at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and then Yale. She is the past president and chairman of AAAS and currently is a director of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation, Lasker Foundation, Mass General Brigham, Pfizer, Inc., and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Susan is a life member of the MIT Corporation and a board member of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Break Through Cancer; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tyler Jacks, PhD

President, Break Through Cancer; Founding Director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Tyler Jacks, the President of Break Through Cancer, has dedicated his life to cancer research. He is the Founding Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology and Co-director of the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology. From 2001 – 2007, he served as director of the Koch Institute’s predecessor, the MIT Center for Cancer Research, and was a long-standing Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1994-2021). Dr. Jacks received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Harvard College, and his doctorate from the University of California, San Francisco, where he trained with Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute before joining the MIT faculty in 1992.
The Jacks laboratory at MIT’s Koch Institute studies the genetic events underlying the development of cancer. Dr. Jacks has pioneered the use of gene targeting technology in mice to study cancer-associated genes and to construct mouse models of many human cancer types, including cancers of the lung, pancreas, colon, thyroid, and soft tissue. These powerful, sophisticated models closely recapitulate human disease, and have led to novel insights into tumor development, as well as new strategies for cancer detection and treatment.
In recognition of his contributions to the study of cancer genetics, Dr. Jacks has received numerous awards, including the AACR Outstanding Achievement Award, the Amgen Award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research, and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and served as the organization’s President in 2009.
Dr. Jacks is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the AACR Academy. In 2015, Dr. Jacks received the Killian Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the MIT faculty can bestow upon one of its members. In 2016, Dr. Jacks co-chaired the Blue-Ribbon Panel for (then) Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. He was also chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute during the Obama administration.
Dr. Jacks serves on the Board of Directors of Amgen and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He co-founded T2 Biosystems and Dragonfly Therapeutics, where he also serves as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. He also is a member of the scientific advisory boards of Skyhawk Therapeutics, SQZ Biotech, the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and the Francis Crick Institute. Dr. Jacks is a member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers.

The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins

Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD, FAACR, FACP

Cancer Center Deputy Director and Co-Director, Gastrointestinal Cancers Program

Liz Jaffee is an internationally recognized expert in cancer immunology and pancreatic cancer.  She is Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Co-Director of the Skip Viragh Pancreatic Cancer Center and Associate Director of the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
Her research focus is on developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer. Liz is a Past President of AACR. She has served on a number of committees at the National Cancer Institute including co-chair of the Blue Ribbon Panel that provided scientific advice to Vice President Biden’s Moonshot Initiative and as Past Chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board.
Liz currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.  She is the inaugural Director of the new Convergence Institute at Johns Hopkins.  She was recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

David Jaffray, PhD

Senior Vice President, Chief Technology and Digital Officer

David Jaffray is a senior vice president and chief technology and digital officer (CTDO) at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also is professor of Radiation Physics with a dual appointment as professor of Imaging Physics. Recruited to MD Anderson in May 2019, David is the institution’s inaugural chief technology and digital officer (CTDO), bringing more than two decades of scientific expertise and proven skill as an innovator. In this role, he directs the strategic design, acquisition, management and implementation of an enterprise-wide technology infrastructure at MD Anderson to safeguard the integrity and availability of the institution’s systems and intellectual property assets.
Before joining MD Anderson, David served as executive vice president for Technology and Innovation at the University Health Network (UHN)/Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario. He led UHN’s information technology transformation, and served in several other leadership roles at UHN, including vice chair of Research for the University of Toronto’s Department of Radiation Oncology, founding director of the STTARR Innovation Centre, and founding director of the Techna Institute for the Advancement of Technology for Health.
He holds multiple patents and has authored more than 275 peer-reviewed publications in topics related to cancer, including, the development of new radiation treatment machines, exploring the fundamental limits of imaging system performance, and the development of novel nanoparticle formulations for improved detection of cancer. During the course of his career, he has received many honors, including the Sylvia Sorkin-Greenfield Award, the Farrington Daniels Award and the Sylvia Fedoruk Award. In 2018, he received the Gold Medal from the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

David A. Scheinberg, MD, PhD

Chair, Molecular Pharmacology Program and Director, Experimental Therapeutics Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

David A. Scheinberg, MD, PHD, is the Vincent Astor Chair, and Chairman, Molecular Pharmacology, Sloan Kettering Institute. He also founded and chairs the Center for Experimental Therapeutics, and founded and was chair of the Nanotechnology Center from 2010 to 2014.  He is a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Co-chair of the Pharmacology graduate program at the Weill-Cornell Medical College and Professor in the Gerstner-Sloan Kettering Graduate School at MSKCC.

He is a founder and director of the Therapeutics Discovery Institute, a non-profit drug discovery corporation formed with Weill Cornell Medical College, Rockefeller University and Sloan Kettering Institute; and founder and advisor to Bridge Medicines, a for-profit drug discovery corporation formed with the same three institutions.  From 1992 – 2003, he was Chief of the Leukemia Service at Memorial Hospital. He has been elected into the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and the Interurban Club. Other awards include the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Science Professorship, the Lucille P. Markey Scholarship, The Emil J. Freireich Award, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Translational Investigator Awards, and CapCure Awards.

In 2013, Nature Biotech recognized him as one of the top 20 Translational Scientists in the world. David is a physician-scientist, specializing in the care of patients with leukemia and also investigating new therapeutic approaches to cancer, both in the hospital and in the laboratory.  The focus of his research is on the discovery and development of novel, specific immuno-therapeutic agents.  This includes monoclonal antibodies that target cell surface or intracellular proteins of cancers, targeted radiopharmaceuticals that deliver radioactive particles including alpha particles or alpha particle nanogenerators, and therapeutic vaccines targeting the oncogene products that cause the cancers.  Eight different therapeutic agents developed by the Scheinberg lab have reached human clinical trials, which include the first humanized antibodies to treat acute leukemia, the first targeted alpha particle therapies and alpha generators, the first tumor specific fusion oncogene product vaccines, and antibodies to intracellular proteins.   He has published more than 300 papers, chapters, or books and has more than 35 US patents.

Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research

John Sherman

Trustee

John Sherman served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of publicly traded Scott & Stringfellow Financial Inc., from January 1996 to August 28, 2002, and was involved in merging the firm in 1999 with BB&T Corporation, now Truist. From 2002-2005 he served as vice chairman of BBT Scott Stringfellow. He served as a Director of Albemarle Corporation from 2003-2017. He also served as a director of Anthem from 2000-2004.

John received his BA degree in British Literature from Princeton University and his MBA from The Darden School, University of Virginia. During the Vietnam war, he was communications officer on the USS Rupertus, a destroyer headquartered in Yokuska, Japan.

MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

Matt Vander Heiden, MD, PhD

Trustee, Director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Lester Wolfe (1919), Professor of Molecular Biology Professor of Biology

Matt Vander Heiden is the Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research,, and is the Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology at MIT. He is also a practicing medical oncologist and an Instructor of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, prior to completing clinical training and a post-doc at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory is interested in understand how metabolism influences cancer.

Columbia University

Cory Abate-Shen, PhD

Chair, Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Cory Abate-Shen, PhD, joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2007. A leader in the field of urological oncology, Dr. Abate-Shen is the Michael and Stella Chernow Professor of Urologic Sciences, director of research in the Department of Urology, and an associate director of HICCC and leader of its Prostate Program.

Dr. Abate-Shen’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of cancer development. She has a longstanding commitment to the generation of mouse models of cancer and their effective use for translational research. Her major research interests are in the area of genitourological cancer. Most notably, her laboratory has developed novel models of prostate and bladder cancer, which have been utilized for investigating the molecular basis of the disease as well as preclinical models for evaluating new therapies.

Dr. Abate-Shen obtained her PhD at Cornell University Medical College, and pursued her postdoctoral training with Tom Curran at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. In 1991, she joined the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School as an assistant professor. She rose to the rank of professor by 2001, and was appointed chief of a new Division in the Department of Medicine in 2002. Dr. Abate-Shen also created the Prostate Program for the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and served as its co-leader from 1999 to 2007.

Among her various honors and awards, she has recently been selected as an American Cancer Society Research Professor, the first ever at Columbia University Medical School.

City of Hope

John D. Carpten, PhD

Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Director, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope

John D. Carpten, Ph.D. is the director of City of Hope’s National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, director of Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope and chief scientific officer. Dr. Carpten also holds the Irell & Manella Cancer Center Director’s Distinguished Chair and the Morgan & Helen Chu Director’s Chair of the Beckman Research Institute.

Dr. Carpten joined City of Hope from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, where he served as Co-leader of the Translational and Clinical Sciences Program (TACS) at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, as well as Professor and Chair for the Department of Translational Genomics, and Co-Director of the USC Institute for Translational Genomics. Prior to USC, he served as Professor and Deputy Director of Basic Sciences, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ. He earned his PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology within the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Ohio State University. He then went on for postdoctoral training in genome sciences at the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD with Dr. Jeffrey M. Trent and co-mentor Dr. Francis F. Collins. He was later promoted to the tenure track at NHGRI where he began his early career development.

Dr. Carpten’s research spans a very broad range of topics including work in germ-line genetics, tumor genome analysis, cancer cell biology, and health disparities. His research program centers around the development and application of cutting edge genomic technologies and bioinformatics analysis in search of germ-line and somatic alterations that are associated with cancer risk and tumor biology, respectively. His work spans many of the known cancer types including but not limited to prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, brain cancer, multiple myeloma, and pediatric cancers.

Dr. Carpten has an intense focus on understanding the role of biology in disparate cancer incidence and mortality rates among underrepresented populations. Through his leadership, the African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer Study (AAHPC) Network was conceived. This study has become a model for genetic studies in underrepresented populations and led to the first genome wide scan for prostate cancer susceptibility genes in African Americans. Dr. Carpten also has a very active program in sporadic tumor research. His laboratory participated in and led several high impact studies including the identification of NF-kb pathway mutations in Multiple Myeloma, which was published in Cancer Cell. He also led a landmark study, which culminated in the discovery of the AKT1(E17K) activating mutation in human cancers, published in Nature. He also has research published in Science, Nature Genetics, Genome Research, and New England Journal of Medicine.

To improve the discovery of important alterations associated with cancer, Dr. Carpten was an early adopter in the implementation, development, and application of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies for cancer genomics. These technologies offer the opportunity to comprehensively interrogate cancer genomes to uncover the lexicon of somatic events within tumors. He has worked with numerous clinical partners to establish Precision Medicine trials using whole genome and transcriptome sequencing to identify therapeutically actionable events. One such study reported results of genome sequencing of 14 metastatic triple negative breast cancers to identify therapeutically actionable events that were used for treatment recommendations. The resulting paper was the most cited article in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics in 2014. He coordinated the development of a CLIA-certified genomic testing laboratory, which was commercialized as Ashion Analytics, LLC.

Stanford University

Howard Chang, MD, PhD

Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Genetics

Dr. Howard Change, PhD isa physician-scientist trained in genome science. His research has focuses on mechanisms that coordinate the activities of large number of genes in cell fate control. He has made series of discoveries that introduced the important and pervasive roles of long noncoding RNAs in biological regulation. His group has substantial experience in epigenetics and RNA biology, including invention of new methods for epigenomic profiling, map RNA occupancy on chromatin, and define RNA structures genome-wide. Hi group has pioneered methods to identify key regulators of large-scale transcriptional programs; these methods have been highly fruitful for studies of development, cancer, and aging. The long term goal of Dr. Chang’s laboratory is to decipher the regulatory information in the human genome for disease diagnosis and therapy.

University of Toronto

Benjamin Haibe-Kains, PhD

Senior Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network; Associate Professor, Department of Medical Biophysics

Trained as a computer scientist, Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains earned his PhD in Bioinformatics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He was a postdoc in the Quackenbush group at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health (USA). Dr. Haibe-Kains started his own laboratory at the Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal (Canada) and he is now Principal Investigator at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. His research focuses on the integration of high-throughput data from various sources to simultaneously analyze multiple facets of diseases, with a particular emphasis on cancer. Dr. Haibe-Kains and his team are using publicly available genomic datasets and data generated through his collaborations to better understand the biology underlying carcinogenesis and to develop new predictive models in order to significantly improve disease management. Dr. Haibe-Kains’ main scientific contributions include several prognostic gene signatures in breast cancer, subtype classification models for ovarian and breast cancers, as well as genomic predictors of drug response in cancer cell lines.

Yale Cancer Center

Patricia LoRusso, DO

Associate Cancer Center Director, Experimental Therapeutics

Pat LoRusso brings more than 25 years of expertise in medical oncology, drug development, and early phase clinical trials. Prior to her Yale appointment, she served in numerous leadership roles at Wayne State University’s Barbara Karmanos Cancer Institute, most recently as director of the Phase I Clinical Trials Program and of the Eisenberg Center for Experimental Therapeutics.

Mount Sinai

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD

Director, Precision Immunology Institute; Director, Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center, Icahn School of Medicine

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, is the Mount Sinai Endowed professor in Cancer Immunology and the Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Merad also co-leads the Cancer Immunology program at The Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Institute and is the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC). Dr. Merad obtained her MD at the University of Algiers, Algeria. She did her residency in Hematology and Oncology in Paris, France and obtained her PhD in Immunology in collaboration between Stanford University and University of Paris VII. She was recruited to Mount Sinai in 2004 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure in 2007 and to Full Professor in 2010 and obtained an Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunology in 2014.

Dr. Merad’s laboratory made seminal discoveries to our understanding of the mechanisms that control the development and functional identity of tissue resident dendritic cells and macrophages during homeostasis, and examining how these regulations are changed in cancer and inflammatory diseases.

The overarching goal of her laboratory is to identify dysregulated pathways in macrophages and dendritic cells that can be harnessed to treat Cancer using both genetically engineered mouse models and human lesions to address these questions. To expand the understanding of immune cells contribution to human lesions, she founded in 2009, the human immune monitoring center at Mount Sinaito implement technology platforms to maximize information obtained from limited biological samples. In 2016, she took the leadership of the Precision Immunology Institute at the icahn School of Medicine (PrIISM) to continue to lead initiatives to enhance human immunology science. PrIISM integrates immunological research programs across 42 laboratories with synergistic expertise in biology, medicine, technology, physics, mathematics and computational biology which come together to frame novel questions to understand the contribution of immune cells to disease initiation, progression and response to treatment, to implement cutting edge technologies andto develop novel immunotherapy strategies for the treatment of human diseases.

Dr. Merad has authored more than 170 primary papers and reviews in high profile journals. She receives generous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on innate immunity and their contribution to human disease, and belongs to several NIH consortia. In 2018, Dr. Merad received the prestigious William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology.

Bethesda, MD

Dinah Singer, PhD

Bethesda, MD
Dr. Singer’s research program is focused on interrogating the regulatory networks governing gene expression to generate an integrated understanding of the interplay between chromatin structure, transcription and translation to establish appropriate regulation of gene expression across diverse cellular and tissue environments. Her most recent studies have identified 1) the cancer therapeutic target BRD4 as a novel histone acetyl transferase that evicts nucleosomes and as a kinase that regulates transcription, linking chromatin structure and transcription and 2) the transcription factor, TAF7, as a checkpoint regulator of early transcription that binds nuclear mRNA and escorts it to polysomes, linking transcription and translation.

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Lillian Siu, MD, FASCO

BMO Chair in Precision Genomics, Director of Phase I Program, Professor of Medicine, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada

Dr. Siu is a senior medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre since 1998, and has been a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto since 2009. She is the Director of the Phase I Program and Co-Director of the Bras and Family Drug Development Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and holds the BMO Chair in Precision Genomics (2016-2026). She is also the Clinical Lead for the Tumor Immunotherapy Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Dr. Siu served on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) for a four-year term (2012-2016); she also served on the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Board of Directors for a three-year term (2017-2020).

Dr. Siu’s major research focus is in the area of new anticancer drug development, particularly with respect to phase I trials and head and neck malignancies. She is the Principal Investigator of a phase I cooperative agreement UM1 award sponsored by the United States National Cancer Institute. In addition to her active research in early phase clinical trials, she has been leading genomics initiatives and immuno-oncology trials at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Together, the three programs of drug development, cancer genomics and tumor immunotherapy form a triad of synergy that supports the institution’s core vision to deliver precision cancer medicine. Internationally, Dr. Siu was the recipient of the US NCI Michaele C. Christian Award in Oncology Drug Development in 2010. She has been awarded the TAT 2020 Honorary Award for contributions in the development of anticancer drugs. Dr. Siu has published over 370 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and she is currently the co-Editor-in-Chief for AACR’s newest journal Cancer Research Communications, and is on the editorial board for Cell and Cancer Cell.

Bethesda, MD

Louis M. Staudt, MD, PhD

Bethesda, MD

University of California, San Francisco

Alejandro Sweet-Cordero, MD

Director, Molecular Oncology Initiative, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Alejando Sweet-Cordero is a pediatric oncologist. He specializes in treating patients with sarcomas and in treating advanced cancers through precision medicine. In research, Sweet-Cordero has two areas of focus. First, he studies ways to use gene sequencing data from tumors to inform treatment decisions. Specifically, he directs the UCSF Molecular Oncology Initiative, which uses such data in determining the best treatments for relapsed, growing or other difficult-to-treat cases. Second, he runs a research lab dedicated to finding new therapies for sarcomas, particularly osteosarcoma and Ewing’s sarcoma.

Sweet-Cordero earned his medical degree at UCSF, where he also completed a residency in pediatrics. He completed a fellowship in pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

The goal of the Sweet-Cordero Lab is to identify novel therapeutic approaches for cancer that target the genetic mutations and altered signaling networks that are specific to cancer cells. Dr. Sweet-Cordero’s team uses functional genomics applied to mouse and human systems (genetically engineered models, patient derived xenografts) to understand the transcriptional networks that regulate the outcome of specific oncogenic mutations and to identify new approaches for cancer therapy. The lab has two primary disease interests: lung cancer and pediatric sarcomas.

In their lung cancer work, the lab is heavily focused on using functional genomic approaches to study how KRAS functions as an oncogene. For example, Dr. Swee-Cordero carried out one of the first mouse and human combined screens to identify Wt1 as a synthetic vulnerability for KRAS in NSCLC (Vicent et al, 2010, JCI). More recently, he described a key role of oncogenic Ras in regulation of the response to nutrient stress (Gwinn et al 2018, Cancer Cell). The lab is funded by the NCI Ras initiative as part of a multi-PI effort to identify novel synthetic lethal genes in the Ras pathway (collaboration with the Bassik and Jackson labs, both at Stanford University). Dr. Sweet-Cordero is also interested in identifying and characterizing the role of tumor-propagating cells (also called cancer stem cells) in NSCLC. Using a combination of mouse and human systems, he identified a key role for Notch3 as a self-renewal pathway in mouse and human NSCLC (Zheng et al, 2013, Cancer Cell). Ongoing projects are seeking to identify other KRAS specific vulnerabilities using 2D and 3D systems in both mouse and human. The lab is also exploring the use of single cell genomics to further evaluate intra-tumor heterogeneity.

In his sarcoma work, Dr. Sweet-Cordero is interested in mechanisms driving Osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma progression. These diseases provide an interesting contrast as clinically they are similar but from a genomic standpoint they are quite distinct. He recently identified EWSAT1 as the first lncRNA involved in the pathogenesis of Ewing sarcoma (Howarth et al, JCI, 2014). Ongoing work is focused on understanding how lncRNAs regulate the oncogenic capacity of the EWS/FLI1 fusion. In osteosarcoma, Dr. Sweet-Cordero is carrying out translational studies to evaluate the use of targeted therapies for this disease. His sarcoma work is facilitated by access to a large (n>30) collection of patient-derived xenograft models. He is using these models to explore the genomic evolution of sarcomas and define novel therapeutics that are informed by the alterations present in individual tumors.

University of Pennsylvania

E. John Wherry, PhD

Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics; Director, Institute for Immunology, Perelman School of Medicine

Dr. E. John Wherry is currently the Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wherry received his BS from Pennsylvania State University in 1993, and his PhD in Immunology from Thomas Jefferson University in 2000.

Dr. Wherry’s expertise focuses pioneering work to define the cellular and molecular nature of Immune Exhaustion – or failure of normal immune system function – in chronic infection and cancer. His lab studies T cell exhaustion in chronic infections and cancer and on the mechanisms by which immunoregulatory “checkpoint” pathways such as PD-1 control T cell exhaustion. Dr. Wherry’s work has defined the molecular mechanisms of T cell exhaustion, including defining the role of inhibitory receptor biology, transcriptional control and regulation of T cell differentiation. This work has helped define key principles about inhibitory receptor blockade and co-blockade to reverse T cell exhaustion (e.g. coblockade of PD-1 and LAG3, etc). Work on combination treatment to reverse exhaustion is now being extended to include other complementary approaches such as radiation and other “orthogonal” treatments. Moreover, Dr. Wherry’s work has defined central transcriptional pathways including those controlled by Blimp-1, T-bet and Eomes in the biology of exhausted T cells. Major efforts continue in transcriptional profiling, genomics and computational biology and multiparameter flow cytometry to understand the nature and reversibility of T cell exhaustion in preclinical and clinical settings.

VCU Massey Cancer Center

Robert A. Winn, MD

Director and Lipman Chair in Oncology, VCU Massey Cancer Center
Senior Associate Dean for Cancer Innovation and Professor of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine, VCU School of Medicine

Robert A. Winn, MD is the Director of the VCU Massey Cancer Center. Dr. Winn is leading the nation in establishing a 21st-century model for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the oncology workforce, optimizing cancer health care outcomes for all and spearheading interdisciplinary approaches to cancer disparities research. Just the fourth director of Massey since its 1975 National Cancer Institute designation, Winn oversees a center comprised of nearly 150 scientists and clinical investigators. Leading by example, Winn is nationally recognized for his community engagement efforts in promoting new approaches to building trust among populations previously disenfranchised from healthcare or excluded or abused in research. Most recently, during the pandemic, Winn launched a nationally heralded Facts & Faith Fridays conversation series, an initiative that creates a dialogue between science, community and faith leaders to combat medical mistrust within the African American community. Hosted guests have included Jill Biden, Ed.D., Anthony Fauci, M.D., Ned Sharpless, M.D., and Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Winn is also the namesake of the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program, a $114 million training and education program in partnership with the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.

Winn is committed to both community-engaged research and research focused on eliminating health disparities. He is principal investigator on several large multi-institutional initiatives, including a team science award from Stand Up To Cancer, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded Planning SPORE focused on Lung Cancer Health Equity and an NCI-funded institutional partnership award fostering cancer disparities research and career development collaboration between Massey and Virginia State University, a Historically Black University located in Petersburg, VA – a city that has faced health and education inequities for generations. Winn also manages his own basic and translational research laboratory which has been supported by multiple NIH and Veterans Affairs Merit awards for nearly two decades. Winn’s laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms and novel therapeutic approaches for lung cancer and the confluence between societal and biological factors which may lead to disparities.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Winn was the inaugural recipient of the 2021 Association of American Cancer Institutes’ (AACI) Cancer Health Equity Award and is AACI’s President Elect. He also serves on the boards of the American Cancer Society and LUNGevity Foundation.

Winn holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and an M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago and a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.