CANCER - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Historian
• Director, Humanities Research Institute / Professor, History

Antoinette Burton is a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire, with a speciality in colonial India and an ongoing interest in Australasia and Africa. She's written on topics ranging from feminism and colonialism to the relationship of empire to the nation and the world. Women, gender and sexuality have always been central to her research, much of which has been concerned with the role of Indian women in the imperial and postcolonial imagination. She's edited collections about politics, mobility, postcolonialism and empire and have frequently collaborated with Tony Ballantyne. At Illinois she teaches courses on modern British history and imperialism, gender and colonialism, autobiography and the archive, approaches and methods and world history. She is currently working on a comprehensive study of empire on the ground in the 19th century. Her most recent publications are Empires and the Reach of the Global(Harvard 2012) with Tony Ballantyne, The First Anglo-Afghan Wars: A Reader(Duke, 2014), An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie(Illinois, 2014) with Mary-Ann Winkelmes and Kyle Mays, and Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons (Duke, 2014) with Isabel Hofmeyr.

Job Titles:

• Interim Director, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology
• Professor

Professor Murphy received two BS degrees, one in chemistry and one in biochemistry, from the University of Illinois in 1986. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. From 1990-1993, she was first an NSF and then an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. From 1993-2009 Professor Murphy was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. In August 2009 she joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois.

Job Titles:

• Internal Advisory Council

Dr. Denis Wirtz, PhD, is the Vice Provost for Research at Johns Hopkins University and has joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering, as well as the Departments of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is also the Theophilus H. Smoot Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Whiting School. He directs the Johns Hopkins Physical Sciences-Oncology Center and co-directs the Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center, both National Cancer Institute-funded entities. He also serves as associate director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology and has served as vice provost for research since February 2014.

Job Titles:

• President Emeritus
• External Advisory Chair

Dr. Edison Liu, MD, is the President Emeritus and is a Professor of The Jackson Laboratory. Previously, he was the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore (2001-2011) and was the president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) from 2007 to 2013. Between 1997 and 2001, he was the scientific director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Clinical Sciences in Bethesda, MD., where he was in charge of the intramural clinical translational science programs. Dr. Liu's own scientific research has focused on the functional genomics of human cancers, particularly breast cancer, uncovering new oncogenes, and deciphering on a genomic scale the dynamics of gene regulation that modulate cancer biology.

Dr. Milan Mrksich, PhD, is the former Vice President for Research and the Henry Wade Rodgers Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. His interests overlap chemistry, biology and engineering, with an emphasis on the design and synthesis of materials that are biologically active and in applications of the materials to relevant problems in the biological and medical sciences. His lab has pioneered the design of ‘dynamic substrates' that present ligands whose activities can be switched on and off in response to electrical or optical signals, particularly for studies that address the responses of adherent cells to changes in the extracellular matrix.

Job Titles:

• Member of the External Advisory Committee

Job Titles:

• Member of the External Advisory Committee
• Physician - Scientist

Dr. Steven Clinton, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist who divides his effort between clinical care and research. He serves as director of genitourinary oncology for The James and manages the renowned Prostate Cancer Multidisciplinary Clinic at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. His team is a national leader in accrual to therapeutic trials in genitourinary cancer. Dr. Clinton also has an active laboratory research program that focuses primarily on understanding the development of prostate cancer, as well as its prevention and treatment.

Job Titles:

• Distinguished Professor

Dr. Timothy Ratliff, PhD, is a distinguished professor in comparative pathobiology and the former Robert Wallace Miller Director of the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research. He received his BS in 1971 from the University of Texas; his MS from Texas A&M; and his PhD from the University of Arkansas I 1977. The Purdue University Center for Cancer Research has a fundamental approach to discover new information about cancer that will lead to new ways to detect and treat the disease.

Job Titles:

• Director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications / Professor, Computer Science
• Fellow of ACM
• NCSA Director and Chief Scientist

Dr. William "Bill" Gropp is NCSA Director and Chief Scientist, and the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Gropp recently co-chaired the National Academy's Committee on Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support U.S. Science. In 2016, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and IEEE Computer Society named Gropp, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign the recipient of the 2016 ACM/IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for highly influential contributions to the programmability of high-performance parallel and distributed computers. Since 2008, he has also been Deputy Director for Research for the Institute of Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies at the University of Illinois. His research interests are in parallel computing, software for scientific computing, and numerical methods for partial differential equations. He has played a major role in the development of the MPI message-passing standard. He is co-author of the most widely used implementation of MPI, MPICH, and was involved in the MPI Forum as a chapter author for both MPI-1 and MPI-2. He has written many books and papers on MPI including "Using MPI" and "Using MPI-2." He is also one of the designers of the PETSc parallel numerical library, and has developed efficient and scalable parallel algorithms for the solution of linear and nonlinear equations. He held the positions of assistant (1982-1988) and associate (1988-1990) professor in the Computer Science Department at Yale University. In 1990, he joined the Numerical Analysis group at Argonne, where he was a Senior Computer Scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division, a Senior Scientist in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and a Senior Fellow in the Argonne-Chicago Computation Institute. From 2000 through 2006, he was also Deputy Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne. Gropp received his B.S. in Mathematics from Case Western Reserve University in 1977, a MS in Physics from the University of Washington in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1982. Gropp is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and SIAM and received the Sidney Fernbach Award from the IEEE Computer Society in 2008. Gropp is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Job Titles:

• Director of the Bee Research Facility
• Director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
• Director, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology / Professor, Entomology

Gene E. Robinson is the Director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. He holds a Swanlund Chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been since 1989. He also holds affiliate appointments in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, the Program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology, and the Beckman Institute of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Ohio State University. Dr. Robinson's research group uses genomics and systems biology to study the mechanisms and evolution of social life, using the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, as the principal model system along with other species of bees. The research is integrative, involving perspectives from evolutionary biology, behavior, neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics. The goal is to explain the function and evolution of behavioral mechanisms that integrate the activity of individuals in a society, neural and neuroendocrine mechanisms that regulate behavior within the brain of the individual, and the genes that influence social behavior. Research focuses on division of labor, aggression, and the famous dance language, a system of symbolic communication. Current projects include: 1) nutritional regulation of brain gene expression and division of labor; 2) gene regulatory network analysis in solitary and social species to determine how brain reward systems change during social evolution; 3) brain metabolic plasticity and aggression; 4) automated monitoring of bee behavior with RFID tags and barcodes; and 5) learning and memory in relation to division of labor. In social evolution, the sophistication of neural and behavioral mechanisms for the essentials of life-food, shelter, and reproduction-stems from increased abilities to communicate and synchronize behavior with conspecifics. Social insects, especially honey bees, are thus exemplars for the discovery of general principles of brain function, behavior, and social organization. In addition to serving as IGB Director, Dr. Robinson is also the director of the Bee Research Facility, as well as serving as director of the Neuroscience Program from 2001-2011, leader of the IGB research theme Neural and Behavioral Plasticity from 2004-2011, and interim IGB Director from 2011-2012. He is the author or co-author of over 275 publications, including 27 published in Science or Nature; has been the recipient or co-recipient of over $50M in funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Agriculture and private foundations; led the effort to gain approval from NIH for the sequencing of the honey bee genome, pioneered the application of genomics to the study of social behavior; and founded the Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium. Dr. Robinson serves on the National Institute of Mental Health Advisory Council and has past and current appointments on scientific advisory boards for academic organizations and companies with significant interests in genomics. Dr. Robinson's honors include: University Scholar and member of the Center of Advanced Study at the University of Illinois; Burroughs Welcome Innovation Award in Functional Genomics; Founders Memorial Award from the Entomological Society of America; Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship; Guggenheim Fellowship; NIH Pioneer Award; Fellow, Animal Behavior Society; Fellow, Entomological Society of America; Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences; and member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Job Titles:

• Chairman, Chemistry
• Endowed Chair, Chemistry

Professor Murphy received two BS degrees, one in chemistry and one in biochemistry, from the University of Illinois in 1986. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. From 1990-1993, she was first an NSF and then an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. From 1993-2009 Professor Murphy was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. In August 2009 she joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois.

Job Titles:

• Dean & Chief Academic Officer, Carle Illinois College of Medicine / Chair, Internal Advisory Council
• Professor of Surgery and Pharmacology at the University of Michigan

Mark Cohen was previously a professor of surgery and pharmacology at the University of Michigan, where he also served as the director of the Medical School Pathway of Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the director of endocrine surgery research and innovation at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. He earned a bachelor's in chemical engineering and a medical doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis. Cohen's clinical interests and national expertise are in endocrine surgery. He has written and published 115 original articles, 12 book chapters, and a Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship textbook. His research has been externally funded by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the National Institutes of Health.

Job Titles:

• Member of the External Advisory Committee

Michelle (Shelley) Barton, PhD, currently serves as the Co-Director of the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR) at the Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute. Dr. Barton's primary focus is on the biology space and working with CEDAR teams. She recently moved from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she was a Professor in the Department of Epigenetics and Molecular Carcinogenesis and Dean of the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Barton's scientific expertise is in cancer epigenetics and gene regulation. As Dean of the Graduate School, she implemented many programs to increase the diversity of the student body, support an enriched sense of community, and improve training in the skills needed for extramural funding and career development. Michelle Barton grew up on a small family farm in Illinois. She went to the University of Illinois-Urbana, as the first in her family to go to college, and received her BS in biochemistry. After working as a research assistant at the Boston University Medical School, she returned to University of Illinois and received her PhD in Biochemistry, working with Dr. David Shapiro in the field of estrogen regulation of gene expression. Dr. Barton went to San Diego for her postdoctoral studies in the field of epigenetics, working with Dr. Beverly Emerson at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. These studies were supported by fellowships from the Anna Fuller Foundation and an NIH NRSA. Dr. Barton's first faculty appointment was at the University of Cincinnati Medical School, where she was promoted to Associate Professor.

Job Titles:

• Director of the School of Molecular
• Director, School of Molecular & Cellular Biology / Professor, Molecular & Cellular Biology

Milan Bagchi is the Director of the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Deborah Paul Endowed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, a University Scholar, and Romano Professorial Scholar. His research seeks to identify the molecular pathways regulated by the steroid hormones estrogen and progesterone during growth and differentiation of hormone-responsive tissues. The physiological effects of these hormones are mediated through cognate nuclear receptors, which function as ligand-inducible transcription factors. We are working to characterize, at molecular and cellular levels, the hormonal mechanisms that regulate embryo implantation and fertility.

Job Titles:

• Director, School of Chemical Sciences
• Expert

Paul Kenis is an expert in microfluidics, more specifically in the design, fabrication, and characterization of microchemical systems for a wide range of applications in energy and biology. Along with radiopharmaceutical synthesis, his group is developing microfluidic technologies for other biomedical applications, such as the screening of antibiotics and solid form screening of pharmaceuticals. Kenis's group is also involved in the application of microfluidics for basic biology studies, including crystallization of membrane proteins and intercellular signaling. The group also frequently serves as a collaborator to researchers who hope to utilize the enabling capabilities of his group's microfluidic platforms to perform biological experiments or syntheses that are hard to pursue otherwise. For example, in collaboration with Gaskins' lab, intracellular redox-sensitive biosensors were developed to study cancerous cells which are known to have a disrupted redox regulation. Kenis received his BS in Chemistry from the Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Twente, Netherlands. Then, he completed his postdoctoral research at Harvard University underGeorge Whitesides. Currently, he is a professor and Head of the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois. He is also the theme leader for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.

Job Titles:

• Member of the External Advisory Committee

Job Titles:

• Dean, Grainger College of Engineering

Rashid Bashir's research group is developing micro and nanoscale sensors for early diagnostics of cancer and infectious diseases. He is very active in bioengineering education and was the principal investigator of the NIH NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer-funded training grant. His research integrates biology and medicine with micro and nanotechnology in two broad areas: how micro/nanotechnology can help solve problems in life sciences (diagnostics and therapeutics) and how life science can help solve issues in micro/nanotechnology (bio-inspired self-assembly). His research projects span from solid-state nanopores to 3D fabrication due to his interest in bionanotechnology, biosensors and bioelectronics, and nanotechnology. Rashid Bashir received his bachelor's in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University and his MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is the Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering and is the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering. He is a Professor of Bioengineering and holds affiliate appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Science and Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Illinois. He has been involved in three startups that have licensed his technologies. He has authored or co-authored 220+ journal papers and 200+ conference papers and abstracts, given 120+ invited talks, and received 40+ patents. He was an NSF Faculty Early Career Award winner and a fellow of IEEE, AIMBE, AAAS, BMES, IAMBE, and APS. He also serves as a Professor at Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, NCSA, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Materials Research Lab. At the Cancer Center at Illinois, he mentors the TiME program.

Job Titles:

• Director
• President of the Association of American Cancer Institutes

Robert A. Winn, M.D., is the President of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI). Dr. Winn is also the Director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Senior Associate Dean for Cancer Innovation and Professor of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine. 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. 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.

Job Titles:

• Director of the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research

Job Titles:

• Interim Director, Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute

Stephen Boppart, MD, Ph.D., is an Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering with appointments in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bioengineering, Medicine, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory focuses on developing novel optical technologies and translating these for cancer imaging. Professor Boppart received his Ph.D. in Medical and Electrical Engineering from MIT, his MD from Harvard Medical School, and his residency training at the University of Illinois in Internal Medicine. He has published over 350 invited and contributed publications and has over 45 patents related to optical biomedical imaging technology. He strongly advocates integrating engineering and medicine to advance human health and our healthcare systems.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Director for Communications and Outreach

Job Titles:

• Chairman, Bioengineering

Rashid Bashir's research group is developing micro and nanoscale sensors for early diagnostics of cancer and infectious diseases. He is very active in bioengineering education and was the principal investigator of the NIH NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer-funded training grant. His research integrates biology and medicine with micro and nanotechnology in two broad areas: how micro/nanotechnology can help solve problems in life sciences (diagnostics and therapeutics) and how life science can help solve issues in micro/nanotechnology (bio-inspired self-assembly). His research projects span from solid-state nanopores to 3D fabrication due to his interest in bionanotechnology, biosensors and bioelectronics, and nanotechnology. Rashid Bashir received his bachelor's in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University and his MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He is the Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering and is the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering. He is a Professor of Bioengineering and holds affiliate appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Science and Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Illinois. He has been involved in three startups that have licensed his technologies. He has authored or co-authored 220+ journal papers and 200+ conference papers and abstracts, given 120+ invited talks, and received 40+ patents. He was an NSF Faculty Early Career Award winner and a fellow of IEEE, AIMBE, AAAS, BMES, IAMBE, and APS. He also serves as a Professor at Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, NCSA, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Materials Research Lab. At the Cancer Center at Illinois, he mentors the TiME program.

Job Titles:

• Associate Director of Administration for the Fred Hutch / University of Washington / Seattle Children 's Cancer Consortium

Wendy has served as the Associate Director of Administration for the Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children's Cancer Consortium since 2016. She is trained as a bench scientist in molecular and cellular biology and has held positions in science education and science policy, with the latter role focused on the National Cancer Institute's Proteomics Initiative. These experiences, along with supporting programs for trainees who are underrepresented in the scientific workforce as well as volunteering for "science in the public" community outreach efforts, prepared her to build infrastructure for Cancer Center Support Grant components including community outreach and engagement, cancer research training and education coordination, and plan to enhance diversity.