Dr. Disis is a Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Pathology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington (UW), and a Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC). She is the Associate Dean for Translational Science in the UW School of Medicine. Dr. Disis received her M.D. from the University of Nebraska Medical School and completed a residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Her fellowship in oncology was done at UW/FHCRC. Dr. Disis is an expert in breast and ovarian cancer immunology and translational research. She is one of the pioneering investigators who discovered that HER-2/neu is a tumor antigen. Her work has led to several clinical trials which evaluate boosting immunity to HER-2/neu with cancer vaccines. Dr. Disis is the Director of the Institute of Translational Health Sciences and the Director for the Center of Translational Medicine in Women’s Health at the UW. Her multifaceted research program within the Tumor Vaccine Group includes the discovery of new antigens for breast and ovarian cancer and the development of vaccine and cellular therapy targeting those antigens.
This Keynote Presentation is sponsored by the School of Medicine Research Roadmap
Mary Woolley is the president of Research!America, the nation's largest not-for-profit, membership supported grassroots public education and advocacy organization committed to making medical and health research a higher national priority. A native of Chicago, Woolley received a bachelor of science from Stanford University, a master of arts from San Francisco State University, and an honorary doctoral degree from the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy. In her early career, Woolley served as San Francisco project director for the then largest-ever NIH-funded clinical trial, the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT). In 1981, she became administrator of the Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, and in 1986 was named the Institute's executive director and CEO. Woolley has served as president and CEO of Research!America since 1990. Woolley is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and serves on its Governing Council, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and serves on the National Academies Board on Life Sciences. Additionally, she is a founding member of the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Mary has a 30-year editorial and publication history on science advocacy and research related topics. She has been published in Science, Nature, Issues in Science and Technology, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Scientist, Women's Health Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others.
Presentations by the Postdocotral Paper of the Year recipient, sponsored by the OHSU Alumni Association
This Keynote Presentation is sponsored by the Graduate Student Organization
Darlene Franics, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Francis's research program explores how biological, psychological and social processes interact over a lifetime to influence health and vulnerability to disease. Her laboratory explores how these processes are causally related. The historic belief that information only flows in one direction, from the genome, is simply incorrect. The research demonstrates that genetically identical organisms can manifest dramatically different phenotypic profiles in response to different environmental and social conditions. The research is focused on exploring how social inequalities in health come to be. Francis optimistically focuses on identifying opportunities for intervention. This level of transdisciplinary research can only be conducted with multiple collaborations that span many disciplines (molecular epigenetics through to social epidemiology). In sum, her research explores how experience and social factors are transduced into biology.
