Committee Member and
Staff Biographies
COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Gilbert S. Omenn, M.D., Ph.D. (Chair), is a professor of Medicine, Genetics, Public Health, and Computational Biology at the University of Michigan, where he also serves as director of the Center for Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics and the Proteomics Alliance for Cancer Research. From 1997 to 2002, Dr. Omenn was chief executive officer and executive vice president for Medical Affairs of the University of Michigan Health System. His research interests include cancer proteomics, chemoprevention of cancers, public health genetics, science-based risk analysis, and health policy. Dr. Omenn served as associate director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and associate director, Office of Management and Budget, in the Executive Office of the President in the Carter Administration. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006. He received his M.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Washington. His advice is sought from nonprofit organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnology companies. Dr. Omenn serves on scientific advisory boards and boards of directors for several companies in the pharmaceutical/ biotechnology realm.
Catherine D. DeAngelis, M.D., is editor-in-chief emerita of the Journal of the American Medical Association and a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Pediatrics) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health (Health Services Administration). From 1990
to 1999 she was vice dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and from 1994 to 2000, she was editor of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. She also has been a member of numerous journal editorial boards. She has authored or edited 11 books on pediatrics and medical education and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and editorials. Most of her recent publications have focused on conflict of interest in medicine, on professionalism and integrity in medicine, on women in medicine, and on medical education. Dr. DeAngelis is a former council member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. She has served as an officer of numerous national academic societies, including past chair of the American Board of Pediatrics and chair of the Pediatric Accreditation Council for Residency Review Committee of the American Council on Graduate Medical Education. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She received her M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, her M.P.H. from the Harvard Graduate School of Public Health (Health Services Administration), and her pediatric specialty training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She also has been awarded seven honorary doctorate degrees and has received numerous awards for humanitarianism and medical excellence.
David L. DeMets, Ph.D., is currently professor in the Department of Bio-statistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, he has been very active in the design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials in several disease areas. Following a postdoctoral appointment at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (1970-1972), he spent 10 years (1972-1982) at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, where he became chief of the Biostatistics Research Branch. In 1982, he joined the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, where he founded and chaired the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics until 2009. He is currently assistant director for Biostatistics and Medical Informatics for the University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, funded in part by NIH. He has coauthored or edited four texts, including Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, now in its fourth edition, as well as texts on statistical methods for clinical trials, principles for data monitoring committees, and case studies for data monitoring. Dr. DeMets is a recognized international leader in statistical research and methods for the analysis of clinical trials. He has collaborated in the development of statistical methods for the sequential analysis of outcome data and the design of clinical trials. He has extensive national and international clinical trial experience and has served on and chaired
numerous NIH and industry-sponsored Data Safety and Monitoring Committees for clinical trials in diverse disciplines. He served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute and Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association, and has been president of the Society for Clinical Trials and president of the Eastern North American Region of the Biometric Society. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, International Statistics Institute, Society for Clinical Trials, American Association for Medical Informatics, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Thomas Fleming, Ph.D., is professor of Biostatistics and Statistics and a full member in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He chaired the Department of Biostatistics from 1993 to 2006, and until 2007 directed the Biostatistics/Epidemiology Core in the University of Washington Center for AIDS Research. He also served as director of the Statistical Center for the HIV/AIDS Prevention Trial Network of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1993 to 2007. For 25 years, Dr. Fleming has been a special government employee with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He has served as chair or a member of data monitoring committees for approximately 200 industry- and government-sponsored clinical trials. He was involved in the development and coordination of NIAID’s national clinical trials program for the prevention and treatment of HIV infection and AIDS and is a member of the Therapeutics Research Working Group in the Office of AIDS Research.
Chief among Dr. Fleming’s research interests are survival analysis, sequential analysis, and the design and analysis of clinical trials, with a special interest in regulatory issues. In 1987 he was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has received numerous awards, including American Public Health Association’s Spiegelman Award, the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation Award, the School of Public Health’s Outstanding Teacher Award, and was the 2007 Greenberg Lecturer at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Fleming received his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has authored or coauthored several books and more than 200 research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Gail Geller, Sc.D., M.H.S., is a professor in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, with joint appointments in the Department of Pediatrics and the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Departments of Health, Behavior & Society and Health Policy & Management. She is also co–deputy director of the Greenwall Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in
Bioethics & Health Policy in the Berman Institute of Bioethics, and is affiliated with the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine.
Dr. Geller’s research has centered on the ethical and psychosocial implications of genetics and genomics. She has been a member of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH’s) Cancer Genetics Studies Consortium and Informed Consent Consortium, and cochaired the Task Force on Informed Consent for Cancer Susceptibility Testing. Her focus on informed consent for genetic testing stems from a broader interest in communication and decision making under conditions of uncertainty and the intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural, and institutional forces that affect it. This overarching theme is reflected in Dr. Geller’s other areas of scholarship, including the use of complementary and alternative medicine and the care of children, young adults, and families affected by chronic, life-limiting disorders (recently, she received one of the NIH “challenge” grants to explore this issue). Dr. Geller also has longstanding interests in research ethics and integrity (she is a member of the ethics core of the Johns Hopkins Clinical and Translational Science Awards program) and in medical education. Dr. Geller has served on numerous panels, including the scientific review panel for the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Program at the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute; and the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities. She is a fellow of the Hastings Center. She received her B.S. from Cornell University and her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health with concentrations in Bioethics and Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Joe W. Gray, Ph.D., received undergraduate training in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Kansas State University. He joined the Biomedical Sciences Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he became increasingly active in the development of a broad range of analytic techniques useful in the study of human and model cancers. Dr. Gray became a professor of Laboratory Medicine and Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1991 to develop clinical applications of these tools. He was interim director at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1995 to 1997 and served as program leader for Cancer Genetics and Breast Oncology. Dr. Gray was associate laboratory director for Life Sciences and director of the Life Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) from 2003 to 2010. He joined Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in 2011 as the Gordon Moore Endowed Chair, where he serves as chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, director of the OHSU Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine, and associate director for Translational Cancer Research in the Knight Cancer Institute. He continues as a visiting
senior scientist at the LBNL and emeritus adjunct professor of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF. He is a member of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Board of Scientific Advisors and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. Dr. Gray’s current research program explores mechanisms by which genomic, transcriptional, and proteomic abnormalities occur in selected cancers; elucidates how these abnormalities contribute to cancer pathophysiology; and assesses the ways in which cells carrying these abnormalities interact with the microenvironment to influence responses to gene-targeted therapies.
Dr. Gray’s work is described in more than 390 publications and in 68 U.S. patents. He has won many distinguished awards, including the United States Department of Defense’s Innovator Award, Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction, and the American Association for Cancer Research’s Team Science Award.
Daniel F. Hayes, M.D., is the clinical director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center (UM CCC), where he is the Stuart B. Padnos Professor of Breast Cancer Research and a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology Oncology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. Dr. Hayes’ professional training and career have been directed toward bridging the gap between laboratory and clinical research. In 1992, he assumed the role as the medical director of the Breast Evaluation Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) until 1996, when he moved to Georgetown University and spent the next 5 years establishing a successful collaboration with Dr. Marc E. Lippman. In 2001, both Drs. Lippman and Hayes joined the UM CCC to continue their translational science. Dr. Hayes serves on scientific advisory boards for biotechnology companies.
Dr. Hayes has been influential in both clinical and laboratory studies of the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. With his colleague, Dr. Donald Kufe, Dr. Hayes published the first reports concerning the development of the CA15-3 blood test, which is currently used world-wide to evaluate patients with breast cancer. He has become an internationally recognized leader in the use of this and other tumor markers, such as human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2). Dr. Hayes and his colleagues have also reported ground-breaking results regarding circulating tumor cells in metastatic breast cancer and the pharmacogenomics of tamoxifen. He is considered to be an expert in the field of clinical research of breast cancer, especially new hormonal and chemotherapeutic treatments, and lectures and publishes on the management of patients with breast cancer. Dr. Hayes has been chair of the Solid Tumor Correlative Sciences Committee of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B, and now holds similar positions in the Southwest Oncology
Group and the U.S. Breast Cancer Intergroup. He cochairs the Expert Panel for Tumor Marker Practice Guidelines for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and he is on the editorial boards of several leading cancer journals. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in biochemistry at Indiana University. He received his M.D. from the Indiana University School of Medicine, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas and a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Harvard’s DFCI.
I. Craig Henderson, M.D., spent the first 25 years of his career conducting clinical and translational research, first at the National Cancer Institute, then at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from 1973 to 1992, where he founded the Breast Evaluation Center (1980), and then at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), as a professor of Medicine and chief of Medical Oncology (1992-1995). Currently, he is an adjunct professor at UCSF, where he sees patients, teaches, and participates in the Breast Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE). In 1995 he became chair and CEO of SEQUUS Pharma. When it merged with Alza in 1999 he became a member of the Alza Board and a senior consultant to the company until 2001, when Alza was purchased by Johnson & Johnson. In 2000 he created a new biotechnology company, Access Oncology, Inc. (AOI), which was merged with Keryx Biopharmaceuticals in 2004. He continued as president of the combined entity until 2008.
Highlights of Dr. Henderson’s career include principal investigator of the national trial that established paclitaxel as a treatment for early breast cancer; chair of the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Group (“Oxford Overviews”) for 10 years; and chair of the Breast Committee of the CALGB from 1989 to 1995. He founded the Bay Area Breast Cancer Translational Research Program, which has received multiple SPORE awards. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member and chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Oncologic Drug Advisory Committee. Dr. Henderson has served on the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association Medical Advisory Panel for more than 19 years and the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee for 3 years. During his tenure at SEQUUS, FDA approved two drugs, Amphotec and Doxil; Doxil was the first drug application submitted under accelerated approval regulations. AOI and Keryx in-licensed four oncology and four non-oncology drugs between 2000 and 2006, including a first-in-class Akt inhibitor, perifosine. Dr. Henderson serves on data monitoring committees for government- and industry-sponsored clinical trials; he also serves on scientific and medical advisory boards for organizations conducting technology assessments in health care. Dr. Henderson has published nearly 300 books and papers.
Larry Kessler, Sc.D., is professor and chair, Department of Health Services, University of Washington. Dr. Kessler served as director of the Office of Surveillance and Biometrics, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, until 2008. From 1984 to 1995, he headed and developed the Applied Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute. In 2001, he spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and served on the faculty of the Department of Health Services. His current research focus in on cost-effectiveness and diagnostic value of medical technology in screening for cancer and other diseases. He is a collaborator on a number of national projects, including CanCORS, studies of outcomes and patterns of care of both colorectal cancer and lung cancer. The goal is to examine what kinds of treatment certain types of patients receive and how the process of obtaining the best cancer care can be improved. Dr. Kessler received his B.S. in mathematics from Boston University and his Sc.D. in Health Services Administration from Johns Hopkins University.
Stanley N. Lapidus, B.S.E.E., currently serves as president of SynapDx Corporation of Southborough, MA, a company he founded in 2009. SynapDx is developing an assay for early detection of autism based on measuring changes in RNA expression patterns derived from peripheral blood cells. In 2003, he cofounded Helicos BioSciences Corp. of Cambridge, MA, and served as CEO until 2008 and chair of its board of directors until 2010. He continues to serve as a member of the board. Helicos developed the world’s first commercial single-molecule DNA sequencer. In 1995, he founded EXACT Sciences Corp. He served as president and CEO of EXACT until 2000 and then served as chair of its board of directors through 2005. EXACT develops non-invasive, DNA-based methods for early detection of colorectal cancer and its precursor lesions. In 1987 he founded Cytyc Corporation, now part of Hologic Corporation. He served as president and CEO until 1994. Cytyc developed and markets the leading Pap test for cervical cancer. Mr. Lapidus currently serves as a board member of Daktari, T2 BioSystems, and Precision Therapeutics, Inc. All are diagnostics companies. Mr. Lapidus holds more than 30 issued U.S. patents, primarily in the field of early detection and diagnosis of cancer. In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Mr. Lapidus holds academic appointments in the Pathology Department at Tufts University Medical School and the Harvard/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences Technology. He earned a B.S.E.E. from Cooper Union in New York City in 1970. He has served as a trustee of Cooper Union since 2002.
Debra G. B. Leonard, M.D., Ph.D., is professor, vice chair for Laboratory Medicine, director of the Clinical Laboratories and director of the
Pathology Residency Training Program in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In 2009, Dr. Leonard was appointed chief diversity officer for Weill Cornell Medical College. She is an expert in molecular diagnostics for genetic, cancer, and infectious diseases. She is certified by the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic Pathology, and by the American Boards of Pathology and Medical Genetics in Molecular Genetic Pathology. Currently, Dr. Leonard is a member of the IOM Roundtable on Translating Genomic-based Research for Health and chair of the Diagnostic Applications Working Group of this Roundtable. Dr. Leonard is a past member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, and a past president of the Association for Molecular Pathology. She has spoken widely on various molecular pathology test services, the future of molecular diagnostics, and the impact of gene patents on molecular pathology practice and patient access to molecular diagnostic testing services. Dr. Leonard occasionally provides advice to pharmaceutical and medical instrument companies on specific projects. She is the editor of two Molecular Pathology textbooks. Most recently, Dr. Leonard received the 2009 Leadership Award from the Association for Molecular Pathology. Her M.D. and Ph.D. were completed at the New York University School of Medicine, where she also did her postgraduate clinical training in Anatomic Pathology, including a surgical pathology fellowship.
Harold Moses, M.D., is the director emeritus of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center; Hortense B. Ingram Professor of Molecular Oncology; professor of Cancer Biology, Medicine, and Pathology; and the founding and current director of the Frances Williams Preston Laboratories. After residency training in Pathology at Vanderbilt and postdoctoral research training at the National Institutes of Health, he spent 5 years as a faculty member in Pathology at Vanderbilt and 12 years at the Mayo Clinic, the last 6 of which were as chair of the Department of Cell Biology. He returned to Vanderbilt 25 years ago as professor and chair of the Department of Cell Biology in the School of Medicine. Fifteen years ago he became the founding director of the Vanderbilt Cancer Center with a concurrent appointment as the B.F. Byrd, Jr., Professor of Clinical Oncology. He resigned as chair of the Department of Cell Biology in 1998 to devote more time to the Cancer Center, now named the E. Bronson Ingram Cancer Center. At the end of 2004, he became director emeritus of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and the Hortense B. Ingram Professor of Medical Oncology. Dr. Moses graduated from Berea College and then earned an M.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., is associate professor of Medicine, Cancer Biology, and Pathology/Microbiology/Immunobiology at Vanderbilt University and the Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research, director of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, and director of Personalized Cancer Medicine at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He has developed a basic and translational research program that made seminal contributions to the understanding of molecular mechanisms in lung cancer pathogenesis. His work has identified new molecular mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance of lung cancers to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors and has yielded important insights into a molecular understanding of lung adenocarcinoma in never smokers. Based on these discoveries, he has developed and successfully tested new anticancer therapies in animal models and humans. His work has helped change the standard of care in lung cancer. More recently, his laboratory has established a high-throughput screen to identify kinase fusions in cancers using next-generation sequencing technologies. Dr. Pao has received multiple honors and awards, including an American Society for Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award, a Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, a V Foundation grant, the Hope Now Award from the Joan’s Legacy Foundation, and a Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Grant Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2011. Dr. Pao obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. at Yale University, did his residency training in Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Campus, and completed his medical oncology fellowship training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Rebecca D. Pentz, Ph.D., is professor of Hematology and Oncology in Research Ethics and professor of Pediatrics at the Emory School of Medicine, as well as Faculty for the Emory Ethics Center in Atlanta. She does empirical ethics research on issues such as informed consent, Phase I research (first use of a drug in humans), and genetic confidentiality, as well as helping researchers with their protocols to make them ethically sound. Dr. Pentz embeds ethics companion studies in most of the major grants from the Winship Cancer Center at Emory and is working closely with Emergency Medicine in research that uses the exception from informed consent. She also is active in pediatrics, having recently completed a multisite NCI-funded study on family decision making in pediatric bone marrow transplant, and serving on multiple Children’s Oncology Group committees. Her extensive empirical research forms the basis of her international speaking and professional publications. Dr. Pentz sits on several key committees at Emory, including the Scientific Review Committee for all cancer research and the Faculty Advisory Committee to the Dean of the Medical School. She is actively involved in education at the Cancer Institute as the Course Director
for Fundamentals of Clinical Research for second year oncology fellows and mentor of the postbaccalaureate ethics fellow. In 2000, she moved to Atlanta from Houston, where she directed the Clinical Ethics Program at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. As a clinical ethicist, she worked closely with patients and families, offering help for those struggling with end-of-life issues.
Dr. Pentz chairs the Informed Consent Task Force for the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Blood Stem Cell Transplantation. She is on the External Scientific Panel of the National Institutes of Health Genotype-Tissue Expression project. She is a member of both the St. Jude and the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network’s Data Safety Monitoring Boards and a member of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Institutional Review Board. She is coeditor of the ethics section of the Oncologist. She was on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Subgroup in support of the cancer Human Biobank.
Nathan Price, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, WA. He is also an affiliate associate professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he advises graduate students as a member of the Graduate College. Prior to moving to ISB, he was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2007 to 2011, where he continues to hold adjunct appointments in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute for Genomic Biology. In 2006, Dr. Price was named one of the inaugural “Tomorrow’s PIs” as a “rising young investigator” in systems biology by Genome Technology, and in 2008 was the recipient of the National Institutes of Health Howard Temin Pathway to Independence Award in Cancer Research. In 2009, he received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to use system biology approaches to guide genome-scale synthetic biology efforts. In 2010, he received the Young Investigator Award from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust for his work to build genome-scale biomolecular network models of human glioblastoma (brain cancer). In 2011, he was one of 13 chemical scientists to be named a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar by the Dreyfus Foundation. Dr. Price served on the steering committee of the Mayo Clinic-University of Illinois Alliance for Technology-Driven Medicine from 2010 to 2011. He now serves on the scientific advisory board of TetraVitae Bioscience, Inc., as well as on the Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board of the P4 Medicine Institute. He is an associate editor of BMC Systems Biology and Biotechnology Journal, and a deputy editor-in-chief of PLoS Computational Biology.
John Quackenbush, Ph.D., earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, then completed a postdoctoral
fellowship in experimental high-energy physics. After receiving a fellowship from the National Center for Human Genome Research, he worked with Glen Evans on the physical mapping of human chromosome 11, and later with Richard Myers and David Cox on large-scale DNA sequencing of chromosomes 21 and 4. In 1998 he joined the faculty at the Institute for Genomic Research, where his work focused on the use of genomic and computational methods for the study of human disease. In 2005 he joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), where his work has increasingly focused on the analysis of women’s cancers, although the methods he and his group develop can be broadly applied. In 2009 he launched the Center for Cancer Computational Biology, a Dana-Farber Strategic Plan Center focused on providing computational support more broadly to the DFCI research community. Dr. Quackenbush occasionally provides advice to biotechnology companies on specific projects.
Elda Railey is cofounder of Research Advocacy Network, a nonprofit group dedicated to advancing patient-focused research. She serves as editor of the e-newsletter, Network News, and director of the Advocate Institute™, an innovative concept and learning environment for patient advocates. Research Advocacy Network has published a tutorial series for advocates, including: Genomics in Cancer, Biomarkers in Cancer, Pathology and Tissue Research, and Understanding Clinical Trial Design. She served for 12 years with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in various capacities, primarily as director of Grants and Sponsored Programs, where she led one of the largest programs for private funding of breast cancer research.
She has reviewed for Komen, Avon-National Cancer Institute (NCI) Partners in Progress, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is a member of the Intercultural Cancer Council and the External Advisory Board of the University of California, San Francisco Breast Cancer SPORE. She has served on the National Steering Committee for Redes En Acción: National Latino Cancer Research Network and was the team leader for the Insurance team for EDICT (Eliminating Disparities in Clinical Trials). She was honored with the Art of Advocacy award from the Genetic Alliance in 2005. As a consultant with the Coalition of Cooperative Groups, she was program coordinator and contributing author on Cancer Research: A Guide to Clinical Trials Modules on Drug Development, Surgical and Radiation Therapies and Tissue and Its Use for the Advocate Training Program. She has served on the Patient Advocate Committee for the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group. Currently, she serves on NCI’s Early Detection Research Network and Clinical Proteomics Technologies for Cancer. She is also a patient advocate for the Lung SPORE at UT Southwestern/MD Anderson Cancer Center.
David F. Ransohoff, M.D., is professor of medicine and clinical professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He graduated from Harvard College and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and did his internship and residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. As a fellow in the then-new field of clinical epidemiology, the field concerned with methods of clinical research to study diagnosis and prognosis, he studied with Alvan Feinstein in Yale’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and wrote a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that helped establish the field of methods to evaluate diagnostic tests. After a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Chicago, Dr. Ransohoff served on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, and then UNC, conducting research in the diagnosis and management of gastrointestinal and other clinical problems. About 15 years ago, Dr. Ransohoff extended his work in clinical epidemiology and diagnosis to include molecular markers for cancer and now collaborates with a number of National Cancer Institute groups, including the Early Detection Research Network and the Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer. At UNC, Dr. Ransohoff has directed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Institutes of Health–funded K30 clinical research curriculum faculty development program.
E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., is vice president for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is also a professor in the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medicine, and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He completed an internship and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University/Presbyterian Hospital, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. He remained as faculty at Yale for nearly 10 years, achieving accelerated promotion to associate professor in 1987. In 1990, went to Temple University to serve as the Abraham Roth Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. Between 2001 and 2006, he served as vice chancellor for Medical Sciences at the University of Arkansas and dean of the College of Medicine. He moved to his current position in 2006.
He has published extensively in the scientific literature: 11 books; 5 monographs; and more than 500 articles, chapters, and abstracts. He is a member of many national scientific organizations. He served as chair of the Association of American Colleges’ Council of Deans. He serves or has served on many governmental and civic organizations and committees, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human
Services Secretary’s Committee on Infant Mortality, The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Massachusetts General Hospital Scientific Advisory Committee, the Board (chair) of the Nelly Berman Classical Music Institute, and the Agnes Irwin School for Girls. He has received numerous special recognitions and awards, including the Distinguished Leadership Award in 2009 and the 2010 Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in Health Sciences from his alma mater, New York University School of Medicine. Originally from Jamaica, West Indies, Dr. Reece completed a B.S. magna cum laude from Long Island University; an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine; a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica; and an M.B.A. from the Fox School of Business & Management of Temple University.
Daniela M. Witten, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington, and an affiliate investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her research involves the development of statistical tools for the analysis of large-scale biological datasets, such as gene expression, DNA copy number, and DNA sequence data. As a graduate student, Dr. Witten held a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (2006-2009) and won the Gertrude Cox Scholarship from the American Statistical Association (2008). She has held the Genentech Endowed Professorship in Biostatistics at the University of Washington (2010-2011). Recent awards include the David Byar Young Investigator Award from the American Statistical Association (2011) and the National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award (2011-2016). Dr. Witten currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. Dr. Witten did her training at Stanford University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and biology with honors and distinction, and a doctorate in statistics.
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Christine Micheel, Ph.D., was the study director for the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on the Review of Omics-Based Tests for Predicting Patient Outcomes in Clinical Trials and the Committee on Qualification of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease. She worked on other topics, including nanotechnology and oncology, access to routine vaccines under Medicare Part D, implementing colorectal cancer screening, and multi-site Phase III clinical trials and the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Groups. Prior to her work at the IOM, Dr. Micheel completed a postdoctoral position at the IBM Almaden Research Center
in San Jose, California, where she studied interactions between biomolecules and nanomaterials. She completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, under the direction of Paul Alivisatos and with the support of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow ship. Dr. Micheel volunteered in the library at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, California, a community resource for women with cancer and their families. Dr. Micheel obtained her bachelor’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she graduated magna cum laude with a major in chemistry. Her undergraduate studies were supported by a Compton II Fellowship (now known as the Florence Moog Fellowship) for pursuit of studies in the fields of biology and chemistry.
Sharyl Nass, Ph.D., is director of the Institute of Medicine (IOM’s) National Cancer Policy Forum (NCPF). As a study director and senior program officer at the IOM, she has worked with the Board on Health Sciences Policy, the Board on Health Care Services, and the National Cancer Policy Board and Forum. Her previous work at the IOM focused on topics that include developing cancer biomarkers, improving cancer clinical trials, formulating strategies for large-scale biomedical science, developing technologies for the early detection of breast cancer, improving breast imaging quality standards, assessing the impact of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule on health research, and facilitating contraceptive research and development. She is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, where she lectures on cancer biology, detection, and treatment. With a Ph.D. in Cell and Tumor Biology from Georgetown University and postdoctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, she has published research on the cell and molecular biology of breast cancer. She also holds a B.S. in Genetics and an M.S. in Endocrinology/Reproductive Physiology, both from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In addition, she studied developmental genetics and molecular biology at the Max Planck Institute in Germany under a fellowship from the Heinrich Hertz-Stiftung Foundation. Dr. Nass was the 2007 recipient of the IOM’s Cecil Award for Excellence in Health Policy Research and the 2010 recipient of a National Academy of Sciences Distinguished Service Award.
Laura Levit, J.D., is a program officer at the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where she has worked with the Board on Health Care Services and the National Cancer Policy Forum. She started at the IOM as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Graduate Fellow in winter 2007 and that year received the IOM Rookie Award. Her previous work at the IOM has focused on topics that include the HIPAA Privacy Rule, comparative effectiveness
research, the oncology workforce, and regulatory hurdles to personalized medicine. She graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in May 2006 and was admitted into the Virginia Bar Association in October 2006. In law school, Ms. Levit worked for several different nonprofit organizations that focused on health and mental health care policy, including the Treatment Advocacy Center, the National Research Center for Women & Families, the Bazelon Center, and the World Federation for Mental Health. She completed her undergraduate studies at the College of William and Mary, receiving a B.S. with honors in psychology.
Erin Balogh, M.P.H., is an associate program officer for the Institute of Medicine Board on Health Care Services and the National Cancer Policy Forum (NCPF). She has directed three NCPF workshops on patient-centered cancer treatment planning, precompetitive collaboration, and combination cancer therapies, and staffed three consensus studies focusing on omics-based test development, the national clinical trials system, and evaluation of bio markers and surrogate endpoints. She completed her M.P.H. in Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with bachelor’s degrees in microbiology and psychology. Ms. Balogh interned with AcademyHealth in Washington, DC, and worked as a research site coordinator for the Urban Institute in Topeka, Kansas. Previously, Ms. Balogh was a management intern with the Arizona State University Office of University Initiatives, a strategic planning group for the university.
Sarah Domnitz, Ph.D., was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow with the Board on Health Care Services and the National Cancer Policy Forum. She received a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Washington in 2011 with support from a National Institutes of Health predoctoral training grant. Her research focused on proteins that facilitate chromosome movement during cell division. While a graduate student, she worked as an intern at the biotechnology company Amgen, Inc., and she received a certificate in Molecular Medicine, a program designed to teach scientists to apply advances in the basic sciences to the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of human disease. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked as a research technician studying Alzheimer disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received a B.S. in biopsychology from the University of Michigan.
Julia E. Dooher, Ph.D., was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow from January to May 2011. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Division of Pediatric
Oncology, laboratory of Dr. Alan Friedman, where she studies biochemical mechanisms contributing to pediatric leukemia. She has served with the Johns Hopkins Postdoctoral Association and on the Vasculitis Foundation Research Committee. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle, where she studied the cell biology and biochemistry of HIV capsid assembly under the direction of Dr. Jaisri Lingappa and with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She received her B.S. from Tufts University, graduating magna cum laude, and as an undergraduate was awarded a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellowship and a Lemelson Fellowship for Innovation at Hampshire College. She is a volunteer with the Incentive Mentoring Program in Baltimore, working with underperforming high school students. Since 1999 she has tutored middle school and high school students in biology and other subjects.
Niharika Sathe, M.H.S., joined the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2010 as a research assistant for the Board on Health Care Services. She completed her M.H.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology with an emphasis on reproductive and cancer biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and prior to that, graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with her bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology. Prior to joining the IOM, Ms. Sathe worked on a pediatric opt-out HIV screening initiative at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. As an undergraduate, Ms. Sathe worked as a research assistant for projects on epigenetic modifiers of Rett Syndrome and clinical trials for retinal implants in retinitis pigmentosa patients, with the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Wilmer Eye Institute, respectively.
Michael Park is senior program assistant for the National Cancer Policy Forum at the Institute of Medicine and has worked at the National Academies since 2007. Mr. Park received his B.A. in Germanic Studies from University of Maryland in 2006 after studying 2 years abroad on scholarship in Germany and Italy. Having completed his final year of high school in Zaragoza, Spain, he is fluent in Spanish, Italian, and German. His primary interests include public health and urban planning.
Roger Herdman, M.D., is director of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Board on Health Care Services. He received his undergraduate and medical school degrees from Yale University. Following an internship at the University of Minnesota and a stint in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Minnesota, where he completed a residency in Pediatrics and a fellowship in Immunology and Nephrology and also served on the faculty. He served as professor of Pediatrics at Albany Medical College until 1979. In 1969, Dr. Herdman
was appointed director of the New York State Kidney Disease Institute in Albany, N Y, and shortly thereafter was appointed deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Health (1969-1977). In 1977 he was named New York State’s director of public health. From 1979 until joining the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), he served as a vice president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In 1983, Dr. Herdman was named assistant director of OTA, where he subsequently served as director from 1993 to 1996. He later joined the IOM as a senior scholar and directed studies on graduate medical education, organ transplantation, silicone breast implants, and the Veterans Administration national formulary. Dr. Herdman was appointed director of the IOM/National Research Council National Cancer Policy Board from 2000 through 2005. From 2005 until 2009, Dr. Herdman directed the IOM National Cancer Policy Forum. In 2007, he was also appointed director of the IOM Board on Health Care Services. During his work at the IOM, Dr. Herdman has worked closely with the U.S. Congress on a wide variety of healthcare policy issues.
Andrew Pope, Ph.D., is director of the Board on Health Sciences Policy at the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He has a Ph.D. in physiology and biochemistry from the University of Maryland and has been a member of the National Academies staff since 1982 and of the IOM staff since 1989. His primary interests are science policy, biomedical ethics, and environmental and occupational influences on human health. During his tenure at the National Academies, Dr. Pope has directed numerous studies on topics that range from injury control, disability prevention, and biologic markers to the protection of human subjects of research, National Institutes of Health priority-setting processes, organ procurement and transplantation policy, and the role of science and technology in countering terrorism. Dr. Pope is the recipient of the IOM’s Cecil Award and the National Academy of Sciences President’s Special Achievement Award.
