The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center this week honored 16 junior faculty members who are expected to become some of America’s future cancer leaders. The faculty members are the first R. Lee Clark Fellow award winners. The new award was established to recognize outstanding work by junior faculty members and to help support their future efforts.
The program is named in honor of MD Anderson’s first full-time director and president, Dr. R. Lee Clark, who served from 1946 to 1978.
The awards are being given to three groups of MD Anderson faculty members: those with a clinical (health care focus), those with a clinical and research focus (physician-scientists), and those with a scientific focus (scientists).
A distinguished panel of experts selected the winners based on their early career accomplishments and their innovative cancer research plans. In addition to the honor, each recipient receives $100,000 to fund their research over the next one to two years.
The following is a list of all of the 2014 R. Lee Clark Fellows:
Clinical Innovator Winners
•Courtney DiNardo, M.D., assistant professor, Leukemia
•Steven Lin, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, Radiation Oncology
•Simrit Parmar, M.D., assistant professor, Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy
•Kathleen Schmeler, M.D., associate professor, Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine
•Jason Westin, M.D., assistant professor, Lymphoma and Myeloma