Who's News

AROUND TOWN
Harmit Singh Malik, PhD, and Ulrike “Riki” Peters, PhD, both based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, received the 2008 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Dr. Malik is an evolutionary biologist.

Dr. Peters is a nutritional and genetic epidemiologist. They will receive their awards at a White House ceremony in the fall. In other news at Fred Hutchinson, Lee Hartwell, PhD, president and director, announced that he will retire in June 2010.

Mary-Ann Bjornsti, PhD, has joined the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama in Birmingham as chair of the department of pharmacology and toxicology. She also will serve as a senior program leader in cancer cell biology. Dr. Bjornsti comes to the university from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

The American Society for Radiation Oncology has selected Theodore Lawrence, MD, PhD, FASTRO (left), and William Shipley, MD, FASTRO, as recipients of its 2009 Gold Medal Award. Dr. Lawrence is the chair of the department of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. Shipley is the chair of the genitourinary oncology unit at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. They will be given their awards at ASTRO 2009 in Chicago. Dr. Lawrence also has been appointed as a trustee-at-large for ASTRO’s Radiation Oncology Institute.

The Society of Surgical Oncology has bestowed 2009 Clinical Investigator Awards, worth $100,000 each, on Celia Chao, MD, of Galveston, Tex., and Rebecca R. White, MD, of Durham, N.C. Dr. Chao’s research is on stromal biomarkers and colorectal cancer recurrence. Dr. White’s work is on gene expression profiles that predict the response of pancreatic cancer to gemcitabine(Drug information on gemcitabine) (Gemzar). Also, Derrick D. Cox, MD, was given the first American Cancer Society/SSO Disparities Fellowship. Dr. Cox is currently a surgical oncology fellow at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.

INTERNATIONAL
Carolyn R. Freeman, MBBS, has been named a 2009 ASTRO fellow. Dr. Freeman is the Michael Rosenbloom Chair in Radiation Oncology at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal. She will receive her award at ASTRO 2009.

Hong Wu, MD, PhD, has been named the inaugural David Geffen Chair in Medical Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Wu is a graduate of China’s Beijing Medical College and Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA, an associate director for research at the Institute for Molecular Medicine, and a researcher with the Jonsson Cancer Center.