Comings . . . Goings

Jiyoung Ahn, Ph.D., left the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch (NEB) to take an assistant professor position in the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Medicine at New York University School of Medicine.

Cindy M. Chang, Ph.D., joined the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch (IIB) as a postdoctoral fellow. She received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she examined risk factors for non-Hodgkin lymphoma molecular subtypes defined by common translocations. Under the mentorship of Allan Hildesheim, Ph.D., she will work on multiple projects involving malignances associated with hematopoiesis and the Epstein-Barr virus.

An industrial hygienist with the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) since 1999, Joseph Coble, Sc.D., moved to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he will work on reducing health hazards associated with the meat industry.

A senior investigator from INSERM at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Florent de Vathaire, Ph.D., joined the Radiation Epidemiology Branch (REB) as a special volunteer for a six-month sabbatical. He will work with Alice J. Sigurdson, Ph.D., and Alina V. Brenner, M.D., Ph.D., on studies of thyroid cancer and brain tumors.

Alexandra Ekblom, M.P.H., joined the Office of Communications and Special Initiatives as an NCI Health Communications Intern. She received an M.P.H. from the George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, where she focused on maternal and child health. Previously, she worked on the Employee Wellness Initiative at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, volunteered at MetroTeen AIDS, and worked as a paralegal. During her six-month internship, she will work with Jennifer K. Loukissas, M.P.P., on numerous communications initiatives.

Leah Ferrucci, Ph.D., left NEB for a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University's School of Nursing.

Melissa Friesen, Ph.D., joined OEEB as a tenure-track investigator. She received a Ph.D. from the School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she worked on strategies to minimize misclassification in epidemiologic studies of wood dust, fungicide, and noise exposures in sawmill workers and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon exposures in aluminum smelter workers. As a postdoctoral fellow, she continued her research on quantitative exposure assessment strategies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Meg R. Gerstenblith, M.D., returned to the Genetic Epidemiology Branch (GEB) as a CRTA fellow after a three-year absence. Working with Alisa M. Goldstein, Ph.D., Dr. Gerstenblith will pursue her research interest in skin cancer, focusing particularly on melanoma. Dr. Gerstenblith received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2004 and came to GEB as a postdoctoral fellow in 2005. In 2006, she left to complete her residency in dermatology at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. During her last year there, she was chief resident in dermatology.

 

Asieh Golozar, M.D., M.P.H., joined GEB as a visiting fellow. She received a medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2005 and an M.P.H. from Tehran University in 2007. Since 2005, she has worked as a research fellow on the Gastric and Esophageal Malignancies in Northern Iran project, a collaboration of scientists from Iran, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and DCEG. In 2008, she completed her first year as a doctoral student in genetic epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Golozar is working with Alisa M. Goldstein, Ph.D., and Philip R. Taylor, M.D., Sc.D., to conduct studies of genetic susceptibility and upper gastrointestinal cancer.

Summer Seongmin Han, Ph.D., joined the Biostatistics Branch (BB) as a research fellow. She received a Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at Yale University in 2009 and has a master's degree in both statistics and economics. Her doctoral dissertation was on the use of likelihood ratio tests in variance component models for identifying genetic risk factors for complex disorders. Dr. Han will work with Philip S. Rosenberg, Ph.D., and Nilanjan Chatterjee, Ph.D., on methodological research and genetic epidemiology studies.

Jonathan Hofmann, Ph.D., joined OEEB as a postdoctoral fellow. He received a Ph.D. in 2008 from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington, where he worked with the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center on various projects related to farm worker health and safety. For his dissertation, he investigated occupational and genetic determinants of serum cholinesterase inhibition among organophosphate-exposed agricultural pesticide handlers. He will work with Mark Purdue, Ph.D., on occupational and molecular epidemiologic investigations of kidney cancer and with Michael C. R. Alavanja, Dr.P.H., and Laura Beane Freeman, Ph.D., on the Agricultural Health Study.

Li Jiao, M.D., Ph.D., left NEB to take an assistant professor position at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Farin Kamangar, M.D., Ph.D., left NEB to serve as the chair of the Department of Public Health Analysis at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Larissa Korde, M.D., M.P.H., left the Clinical Genetics Branch (CGB) to take an assistant professor position in the Division of Oncology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

 

Christian Kratz, M.D., joined CGB as a tenure-track investigator. He is board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric hematology/oncology and previously worked on the academic faculty at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He has conducted genetic research studies on childhood myelodysplastic syndromes, myeloproliferative disorders, and childhood cancer predisposition syndromes. Through his research, he has identified germline mutations in the KRAS gene as a cause of two related developmental disorders, Noonan syndrome and cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome. In 2008, he became clinical chair of the Department of Pediatric Oncology in New Zealand's capital, Wellington. In CGB, he will study familial testicular cancer, Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, and Diamond-Blackfan anemia families as well as other familial cancer syndromes of childhood.

Victoria Landsman, Ph.D., joined BB as a postdoctoral fellow. She has a Ph.D. in statistics from the Hebrew University in Israel, where she developed methods for estimating treatment effects from observational data. She will work with Barry I. Graubard, Ph.D., and other BB scientists to identify causal relationships in complex genetic and environmental data collected in epidemiologic studies and to develop skills and experience in the biostatistical methods used in population genetics, molecular epidemiology, and environmental epidemiology.

Rayna Matsuno Weise, M.S., M.P.H., left BB to take a position as a research epidemiologist at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.

Alison Mondul, Ph.D., joined NEB as a postdoctoral fellow. She received a Ph.D. in cancer epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she studied the relationship between statin use, cholesterol, and prostate cancer with her mentor, Dr. Elizabeth Platz. Prior to her doctoral work at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Mondul earned an M.S.P.H. in epidemiology from Emory University and worked at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia. She will work with Demetrius Albanes, M.D., on risk factors for prostate cancer.

Megan Murphy, M.S., joined the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch (HREB) as a predoctoral fellow. She has a B.Eng. in chemical engineering from McGill University and an M.S. in biostatistics from Columbia University. She is working with Nicolas Wentzensen, M.D., Ph.D., and other DCEG researchers on the molecular epidemiology of ovarian cancer and other gynecologic malignancies.

Gila Neta, Ph.D., joined REB as a postdoctoral fellow. She received a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in June. She will work on the genetic risk of thyroid cancer with Alice J. Sigurdson, Ph.D., and on a genetic study of brain tumors with Preetha Rajaraman, Ph.D.

David Ng, M.D., left GEB to join the Genetic Disease Research Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Colleen Pelser, Ph.D., left IIB for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Carolina Porras, Ph.D., joined IIB as an ORISE postdoctoral fellow. She is a co-investigator on the Costa Rican Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccine Trial. Trained in microbiology, she is affiliated with the Proyecto Epidemiológico Guanacaste in Costa Rica. She will spend one year at IIB working with Allan Hildesheim, Ph.D., and the HPV Vaccine Trial group.

Jian-Song Ren, Ph.D., left NEB to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the International Research Agency on Cancer in Lyon, France.

Ritsu Sakata, Ph.D., left REB and returned to the Radiation Research Foundation in Japan.

Joshua Sampson, Ph.D., joined BB as a tenure-track investigator. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 from the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. For his dissertation, he developed statistical methodology for “genetical genomics,” finding improved methods for mapping genetic loci for quantitative gene expressions. After graduation, he continued his work in statistical genetics as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Hongyu Zhao at Yale University’s Center for Statistical Genomics and Proteomics, where he focused on finding disease-causing quantitative trait loci in genome-wide association studies and identifying ancestry informative markers.

Gillermo Seratti, M.D., left CGB and returned to a medical practice in Argentina.

Fatma Shebl, M.D., Ph.D., joined IIB as a research fellow. Under the mentorship of Allan Hildesheim, Ph.D., she received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where she developed methods for adjusting misclassification errors of incidence estimates. Her current research involves using linked databases to evaluate cancer risk among people with such diseases as end-stage renal disease, hepatitis C virus, and AIDS. In addition, she is studying risk factors for biliary tract cancer, patterns of immune response to HPV-16/18 vaccine, and the genetics of hepatitis C virus clearance.

Jianxin Shi, Ph.D., joined BB as a tenure-track investigator. He received a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University in 2006. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences and the Department of Health Research and Policy, where he later was appointed as a research scientist. His research interests include statistical problems arising from mapping complex diseases and quantitative traits based on both families and unrelated subjects. His current research projects include detecting disease-associated copy number variants, combining genotype data and expression data, meta-analysis, and developing methods for predicting functional genetic variants.

Rebecca Smith-Bindman, M.D., a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging; epidemiology and biostatistics; and obstetrics, gynecology, and reproduction sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, has joined REB for a 10-month sabbatical. Her research focuses on evaluating population patterns of diagnostic testing and the relative risks, benefits, and outcomes associated with imaging. At REB, she will work with Amy Berrington de Gonzalez, D.Phil., Choonsik Lee, Ph.D., and other Division researchers on large population data sets to assess population exposures to diagnostic tests, models for accurately estimating radiation exposure from these tests, and observational studies to assess the association between high exposure and cancer risk.

After three months as a summer student, Min Tang, M.S., joined BB as a predoctoral fellow. She is working on her doctorate in mathematical statistics with Dr. Eric Slud at the University of Maryland and with Ruth M. Pfeiffer, Ph.D. Ms. Tang's thesis involves assessing goodness of fit for generalized linear mixed models that can be applied to correlated data in epidemiologic studies.

Lauren Wilson, Sc.M., joined HREB as a predoctoral fellow. She has a master of science in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is pursuing her doctoral degree there under the mentorship of Dr. Patti Gravitt. Ms. Wilson will work with Philip E. Castle, Ph.D., M.P.H., on visual, microscopic, and molecular measures of cervical inflammation and their relationship to the natural history of HPV.

Hui-Lee Wong, Ph.D., left IIB to join the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Visiting scientists Songnian Yin, Ph.D., and Guilian Li, Ph.D., left OEEB and returned to the Institute of Occupational Health and Poison Control at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control after working on a collaborative study of carcinogenicity related to occupational benzene exposure.

Fei Yue, M.D., a toxicologist from the Guangdong Poisoning Control Center in China, joined OEEB as a visiting scientist for one year. His major research area is the relationship between occupational exposure to trichloroethylene and risk of cancer and other diseases.

 

 

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