Sorry to be late with this entry, but I spent all Friday at the Cancer Center Directors’ Retreat at NCI. Harold Varmus was a very engaged participant and it is clear that recognizes the importance of cancer centers to the national effort. It is also clear that he will hold us all to high standards of scientific achievement. That’s OK by me.
There was a lot to talk about last week, so I wanted to make the time to make a late blog entry. On Tuesday evening we had a Georgetown Lombardi reception to celebrate Sandy Swain’s election as president-elect of ASCO beginning in 2012. It was a wonderful opportunity to honor Sandy and to celebrate with our colleagues from Georgetown University Hospital, Washington Hospital Center and MedStar. This is an important accomplishment for Sandy, and we are proud of her.
Wednesday evening was the MedStar clinical meeting, at which we discussed ways to prioritize clinical investments. We’re making important progress in that the areas of clinical and basic research strength are certain to be high priorities for investment and expansion.
I was also pleased last week to meet with Yu Shyr, who—as I’ve previously announced—will be joining us July 1 as the new chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Biomathematics (DBBB), director of Lombardi’s Biostatistics & Bioinformatics Shared Resource and as founding associate director for quantitative biology. Yu will be visiting regularly between now and his start date. Hopefully he’ll have an opportunity to meet many of you in the coming months. He is full of great ideas and energy, and I’m thrilled that he’ll be joining our team. He is already involved in at least four projects with Georgetown investigators, and is looking for even more collaborations.
I hope you had had a restful holiday weekend!