EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
PS-OC representatives
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Dr. Franziska Michor is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the PS-OC. Dr. Michor is an Associate Professor of Computational Biology in the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Michor obtained her undergraduate in mathematics and molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Austria, and her PhD from the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Afterwards, she was awarded a fellowship from the Harvard Society of Fellows, which she used to perform research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. From 2007 until 2010, she was an Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Michor is the Principal Investigator of an NIH R01 and has been the recipient of the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize of the Society for the Study of Evolution, a Gerstner Young Investigator Award, and a Leon Levy Young Investigator Award. Dr. Michor’s laboratory investigates the evolutionary dynamics of cancer initiation, progression, response to therapy, and emergence of resistance. Additionally to being the PI of the PS-OC, Dr. Michor is also a project leader of projects 2 and 3 and an investigator of project 1. |
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Dr. Eric C. Holland, MD, PhD is the Senior Co-Investigator (SI) of the PS-OC. Dr. Holland has been on the faculty at MSKCC since December of 2000. He is currently an Attending Surgeon in the Department of Neurosurgery, an Attending in the Departments of Neurology, and a Member of SKI’s Department of Cancer Biology and Genetics. He holds the Emily Tow Jackson Chair in Oncology. In addition, he is the Vice Chairman of Translational Research for the Department of Surgery, and Director of the BTC which supports basic and translational research in brain tumor biology and its application to clinical trials. Dr. Holland is the Principal Investigator of several NIH grants including two RO1’s, a U54 program grant on the tumor microenvironment, and was previously the PI of a P20 SPORE planning grant in brain tumors at MSKCC. In addition, he has been a member of the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium Steering Committee since its inception, and has served on multiple committees and advisory boards at the NIH involving brain tumors and brain tumor biology. Dr. Holland’s laboratory focuses primarily on the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of CNS tumors and in modeling these cancers in the mouse. To this end, the laboratory pioneered the use of RCAS/TVA mediated somatic cell gene transfer in the study of multi-step tumorigenesis in the mouse. This laboratory is developing bioluminescence and anatomical imaging strategies for tumors that allow non-invasive visualization of biologic activities in the tumors. In addition, these models are being used in preclinical trials of novel drugs targeting the signaling pathways that cause the disease. Additionally to being the SI of the PS-OC, Dr. Holland is also a project leader of project 2 and an investigator of project 1 and 3. |
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Dr. Chris Sander, PhD, is a theoretical physicist. Currently, he is the Director of the Computational Biology Center (CBC) and the Chairman of the Sloan-Kettering Institute's Computational Biology Program. The CBC's researchers and engineers are devoted both to basic science and to the goal of developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools that help improve the lives of people affected by cancer. They often collaborate with researchers in the lab and in the clinic to translate data -- data such as the molecular profiles of cells and tissues, the billions of letters of genome sequences, and the functions and structures of key genes -- into biological insights and prediction tools. Current areas of research in the Sander group includes identification of oncogenically altered pathways from genomic and molecular profiling in cancer, algorithms for the analysis of cancer genomics data, design of combinatorial cancer therapy, drug target identification, knowledge representation of biological pathways, protein evolution, specificity in protein networks, and the function of small RNAs. Dr. Sander is a project leader of project 1 and an investigator of project 3. |
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Dr. William Pao, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. He has secondary appointments in the Departments of Cancer Biology and Pathology, is the Director of Personalized Cancer Medicine at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), and is the Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research at VICC. Prior to his appointments at Vanderbilt, he was an Assistant Member in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program and an Assistant Attending Physician on the Thoracic Oncology Service, both at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY. As a physician-scientist with a special interest in thoracic oncology, Dr. Pao has focused on defining clinically relevant molecular subsets of lung cancer. He has been a leader in establishing mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to small molecules that target the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and his lab has identified multiple strategies to overcome acquired resistance to such drugs in lung cancer. Dr. Pao currently serves as PI on NCI K08 and R01 grants, and a project leader on an NCI P01 grant. He has served on multiple committees at AACR and ASCO regarding translational research, and has been a journal editor for PLoS Medicine, Cancer Research, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Pao is a project leader of project 3.
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External advisors
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Dr. Andrea Califano's doctoral thesis in physics, at the University of Florence, was on the behavior of high-dimensional dynamical systems . From 1986 to 1990, as a Research Staff Member in the Exploratory Computer Vision Group at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center he worked on several algorithms for machine learning, more specifically for the interpretation of 2D and 3D visual scenes. In 1990 Dr. Califano started his activities in Computational Biology and, in 1997, became the program director of the IBM Computational Biology Center, a worldwide organization active in several research areas related to bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, complex biological system modeling/simulation, microarray analysis, protein structure prediction, and molecular-dynamics. In 2000 he co-founded First Genetic Trust, Inc. to actively pursue translational genomics research and infrastructure related activities in the context of large-scale patient studies with a genetic components. Finally, in 2003, he joined Columbia University as Professor of Biomedical Informatics, with appointments in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and in the Institute for Cancer Genetics. Dr. Califano currently serves as a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute.
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Dr. Larry Norton is Deputy Physician-in-Chief for Breast Cancer Programs and the medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). He is also the principal investigator of a Program Project Grant from the National Cancer Institute that is aimed at better understanding breast cancer in the laboratory and in bringing these advances into clinical practice. Dr. Norton is most specifically identified with the development of an approach to therapy called "dose density," or "sequential dose density." This is a new and more effective way of using anticancer drugs, based on a mathematical model he developed with his colleagues, which maximizes the killing of cancer cells while minimizing toxicity. Since its inception in 1993, Dr. Norton has served as chairman of the Medical Advisory Board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He was formerly the Chair of the Breast Committee of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer and Leukemia Group B. He was President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology from 2001 to 2002 and was a Presidential Appointee to the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute from 1998 to 2004. He is currently professor of medicine, Weill Medical College of Cornell University. |
NCI representative
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Nicole M. Moore is the PS-OC Project Manager for the Office of Physical Sciences-Oncology at the National Cancer Institute. Prior to joining the Office of Physical Sciences in Oncology, Dr. Nicole M. Moore was a research chemist in the Biomaterials Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Her research efforts focused on fabricating biaoctive gradients with click chemistry for high throughput measurement of cell response to functionalized materials. This work highlighted key concentrations of immobilized biomimetic peptides that direct osteogenic differentiation and induce inflammation promoting rational design of biomaterials. While at NIST, Dr. Moore was awarded an exploratory research grant to develop new technology for measuring intracellular trafficking of nanoparticles and the Material Science and Engineering Laboratory Work-Life and Diversity Award. Dr. Moore received her doctorate in chemical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis where she systematically explored the effect of peptides on the intracellular trafficking of nanoparticles culminating in the development of a non-toxic and efficient multifunctional polyethylene glycol vehicle for gene therapy. Upon completion of her dissertation, she was awarded a National Research Council Postdoctoral fellowship at NIST in the Biomaterials Group. Dr. Moore earned her Bachelor of Science in Biomolecular and Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. She has co-authored several research publications in both the biological and the physical sciences. In addition, she is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science postdoctoral and graduate student advisory board.
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