Episode One Experts
C. Norman Coleman, MD, is director of the Radiation Oncology Sciences Program for the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. He also serves the NCI as chief of the Radiation Oncology Branch and deputy director of the Center for Cancer Research, among other positions. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont and medical degree from Yale. He completed his internship and residency at the University of California in San Francisco and at the NCI. He served on the staff of Stanford University’s School of Medicine before joining Harvard Medical School in 1985. He joined the NCI in 1999. He is the author of “Understanding Cancer: A Patient’s Guide to Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment,” published in 1998.
Andrew C. Von Eschenbach, MD, was named director of the National Cancer Institute in December 2001. Previously, he was a research director at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. A urologist by training and a cancer survivor himself, he earned his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and his medical degree from Georgetown University Medical School. He completed residencies at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia before becoming an instructor in urology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Mark A. Israel, MD, since October 2001 has been director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Previously, he was the Kathleen M. Plant Distinguished Professor and Director of the Preuss Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-Oncology at University of California at San Francisco, where he had been a faculty member since 1990. A leading expert on childhood brain tumors, Israel graduated from Hamilton College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following his training in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, he was recruited to the National Institutes of Health, where he rose to head the Molecular Biology Section (formerly molecular genetics) in the Pediatric Branch of the National Cancer Institute.
Christopher H. Lowrey, MD, is a member of the Section of Hematology/Oncology of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He joined the faculty of Dartmouth Medical School in 1993, and has been co-director of the Hem/Onc Fellowship Program in charge of research since 1996. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, his master’s from the University of Pennsylvania, and his medical degree from Boston University. He completed his residency at the New England Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health.
Robert A. Weinberg, PhD, is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Oncology Research Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass. A pioneer in cancer research, he is credited with discovering the first human oncogene and the first tumor suppressor gene. Winner of the 1997 National Medal of Science, he earned his Ph.D. in biology from M.I.T. in 1969. He was appointed a professor at M.I.T. in 1982, the same year he joined the Whitehead Institute. Weinberg was named American Cancer Society Research Professor in 1985 and received the Daniel K. Ludwig Professorship for Cancer Research in 1997. He is the author of “One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins,” published in 1998.