AROUND TOWN
Michael A. Caligiuri, MD (right), is the new president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI). Dr. Caligiuri is the director of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and CEO of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in Columbus. He holds the John L. Marakas Nationwide Insurance Enterprise Foundation Chair in Cancer Research. Dr. Caligiuri will serve a two-year term as AACI president. Also, Joseph Flynn, MD, hematology clinical director at Ohio State, was presented with the 2009 Dr. John D. Kenny National Award by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD, has received the 2009 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Women in Medicine Leadership Development Award. Dr. Travis is based at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where she is the associate vice president for Women Faculty Programs and a professor in the departments of experimental radiation oncology and pulmonary medicine.
Donald I. Abrams, MD (below, right), has been named president of the Society of Integrative Oncology. Dr. Abrams is chief of hematology-oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and director of integrative oncology research at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.
The American Cancer Society named James A. Block, MD, as the inaugural recipient of the 2009 Pathfinder in Palliative Care Award. Dr. Block is the president of the consulting firm, J.A. Block Health Associates, a senior hospital advisor to the Center to Advance Palliative Care, and a consultant to the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation.
Mark Weiss, MD, has joined Thomas Jefferson University as director of hematologic malignancies in the department of medical oncology. Dr. Weiss, who comes to Philadelphia from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, also will serve as professor of medical oncology at Jefferson Medical College.
Mary-Ann Bjornsti, PhD (right), has been appointed associate director for translational research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also will continue to serve as the chair of the department of pharmacology and toxicology at UAB. Dr. Bjornsti came to UAB in 2009 from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
INTERNATIONAL
Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Edward De Robertis, MD, PhD, to a lifetime term on the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a 406-year-old organization of 80 scientists who promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences. Dr. De Robertis is a professor of biological chemistry and the Norman Sprague Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was raised in Uruguay and has studied at Leloir Institute in Argentina and at the Medical Research Council in the UK. He served as a professor of cell biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
