External Advisory Board
M. Eileen Dolan, PhD is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. She obtained her BS in Chemistry from the University of Dayton and PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Purdue University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, she was appointed to the faculty at the University of Chicago. She holds several leadership positions including Chair of the Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics that includes a board-certified training program for clinical and post-doctoral fellows. Within the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, she serves as co-leader of the Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics Program and Associate Director for Education. In this capacity, she has initiated several pipeline programs including the Chicago EYES (Educators and Youth Enjoy Science) on Cancer program that provides hands-on cancer research experiences for talented teachers, undergraduates and high school students in Chicago communities and serves as a catalyst for student growth and interest in science careers. She also directs a Graduate Training Program in Breast Cancer Health Disparities funded by the Komen Graduate Training and Disparities Research Program. She has mentored clinical and post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, medical students, undergraduates and high school students. She was the recipient of the 2016 University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division Distinguished Educator/Mentor Award. She has a broad background in pharmacology and specific expertise in pharmacogenomics of anticancer agent toxicity using clinical genome wide association studies. Her laboratory focuses on the identification and functional validation of genes/genetic variants associated with chemotherapeutic toxicities.
Paul J. Hergenrother, Kenneth Rinehart Jr. Endowed Chair In Natural Products Chemistry, Professor of Chemistry Affiliate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Professor Hergenrother received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1994. He went on to the University of Texas at Austin and obtained his Ph.D. in 1999; during this time Paul was the recipient of an American Chemical Society graduate student fellowship and the Roche Award for Excellence in Organic Chemistry. After an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he joined the faculty at Illinois in 2001. His research interests are in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, chemical biology, and biochemistry.
Beatrice Knudsen, M.D., Ph.D. is the Medical Director for Cedars-Sinai Advanced Biobank and Director of Translational Pathology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She obtained her M.S. degree in Chemistry at University of Vienna, Austria and received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology and M.D. degrees at Cornell University, New York. She performed her post-doctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Molecular Oncology at the Rockefeller University in New York and completed her residency in Anatomic Pathology at New York Hospital. Dr. Knusden is board certified in Anatomic Pathology. She has considerable experience with tissue procurement, tissue banking and molecular diagnostics. Further, she performs research in methods to improve quality of harvested tissues (for example, to stabilize phosphorylation and optimize other bioanalytes). In addition, she directs research programs on prostate cancer metastasis and prostate cancer prevention.
Lynn M. Matrisian, PhD, MBA, is Vice President of Scientific & Medical Affairs at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, based in Manhattan Beach, California. She is formerly Professor and the founding Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee. She received a BS in medical technology from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and MBA from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. She was appointed to the faculty of Vanderbilt University following postdoctoral training in Strasbourg, France. She was President of the American Association of Cancer Research and a Fellow of the AACR Academy. She served as co-chair of the National Cancer Institute's Translational Research Working Group. Research in her laboratory revolved around the molecular mechanisms underlying tumor progression and metastasis, with emphasis on the biology of matrix-degrading proteinases. At the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, Dr. Matrisian focuses on understanding the scientific and medical activities within the pancreatic cancer field and facilitating these activities through both grant programs and patient support programs.
Tom O’Halloran, Ph.D. is the Morrison Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and Associate Director for Basic Sciences Research at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University Chicago, IL. He obtained his B.S. and M.A. degrees at the University of Missouri in Columbia followed by his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University, New York. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. Dr. O’Halloran is an NIH MERIT scholar, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His research program is focused on the chemistry and biology of transition metals, their chaperone proteins and receptors.
Cynthia Reinhart-King, PhD, is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2017, she was on the faculty of Cornell University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2008-2016. She obtained undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and biology at MIT and her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Bioengineering as a Whitaker Fellow. She then completed postdoctoral training as an Individual NIH NRSA postdoctoral at the University of Rochester. Dr. Reinhart-King’s current research interests are in the areas of cell mechanics and cell migration specifically in the context of cancer and atherosclerosis. Her lab has received funding from the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the American Federation of Aging Research. She has been awarded the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, an NSF CAREER Award, the 2010 Sonny Yau ‘72 Excellence in Teaching Award, a 2013 Cook Award for “contributions towards improving the climate for women at Cornell,” and the 2015 Zellman Warhaft Commitment to Diversity Award from the Cornell College of Engineering. She is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Anil K. Sood, M.D. is professor in the Departments of Gynecologic Oncology and Cancer Biology and co-director of the Center for RNA Interference and Non-Coding RNA at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. He is also Co-Director of the multi-disciplinary Blanton-Davis Ovarian Cancer Research Program and Vice Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Gynecologic Oncology. Dr. Sood received his medical degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has received major recognition for his research accomplishments including the Hunter Award from the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society and the Margaret Greenfield/Carmel Cohen Excellence in Ovarian Cancer Research Prize. He was recently elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, an honor society for physician-scientists. His research is focused in three main areas: 1) development of new strategies for in vivo siRNA delivery, 2) development of novel anti-vascular therapeutic approaches, and 3) effect of neuroendocrine stress hormones on ovarian cancer growth and progression.