DCEG People in the News

In June, Christian C. Abnet, Ph.D., M.P.H., Nutritional Epidemiology Branch (NEB), gave a talk titled "Diet and cancer: Molecular approaches to dietary exposures" at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Blanche P. Alter, M.D., M.P.H., Clinical Genetics Branch (CGB), delivered invited presentations on inherited bone marrow failure syndromes and cancer risk at meetings in Los Angeles, California, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Bern, Switzerland in April and at a June meeting in Adelaide, Australia.

In August, Dalsu A. N. Baris, M.D., Ph.D., Mark Purdue, Ph.D., and Mary H. Ward, Ph.D., all of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), gave invited talks at the symposium Organochlorines and Cancer: Recent Findings and Possible Mechanisms at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

In May, Porcia T. Bradford, M.D., Genetic Epidemiology Branch (GEB), gave two presentations, "Increased risk of second primary cancers after diagnosis of melanoma" and "Cutaneous lymphoma incidence in the United States," at the annual meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology in Montreal, Canada.

In August, Neil E. Caporaso, M.D. (GEB), cochaired and presented at the Phenotype Harmonization Committee meeting at the NIH-sponsored GENEVA (Gene Environment Association Studies) meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

In May, Wong-Ho Chow, Ph.D. (OEEB), gave an invited talk titled "Esophageal adenocarcinoma: Global incidence patterns and clues to etiology" at the International Symposium on Recent Progress on Head and Neck Cancer and Esophageal Cancer organized by the Foundation for Promotion of Cancer Research in Tokyo, Japan.

In July, Amanda J. Cross, Ph.D. (NEB), Mark H. Greene, M.D., Chief of CGB, and Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch (HREB) members Philip E. Castle, Ph.D., M.P.H., Jonine D. Figueroa, Ph.D., M.P.H., Ann W. Hsing, Ph.D., and James V. Lacey, Jr., Ph.D., gave lectures for the Principles and Practice of Cancer Prevention and Control Course, a part of the NCI Summer Curriculum in Cancer Prevention.

In April, Leah Ferrucci, Ph.D. (NEB)—under the mentorship of Amanda J. Cross, Ph.D. (NEB), Barry I. Graubard, Ph.D., Biostatistics Branch (BB), Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D. (NEB), and Dr. Susan Mayne and Dr. Xiaomei Ma, both of Yale University—successfully defended her doctoral dissertation "The role of meat, meat mutagens, and xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes in neoplasia."

In August, Mitchell H. Gail, M.D., Ph.D., and Ruth M. Pfeiffer, Ph.D., both of BB, taught an invited short course on "Absolute risk projection" at the American Statistical Association in Washington, DC. Dr. Gail also presented "The value of single nucleotide polymophisms (SNPs) in projecting breast cancer risk" at the same meeting and "Applying the Lorenz curve to disease risk to optimize health benefits under cost constraints" at a conference at George Washington University to honor Joseph L. Gastwirth. In addition, he gave an invited talk titled "The value of SNPs in projecting breast cancer risk" at the Harvard School of Public Health in September. Dr. Pfeiffer gave an invited lecture about "The probability of detecting disease-associated SNPs in case-control genome-wide association studies" at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Biostatistics Branch in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina in May.

In May, Gretchen L. Gierach, Ph.D., and Mark E. Sherman, M.D., both of HREB, gave a joint invited presentation on "Opportunities for spectroscopic analysis of breast tissue in epidemiologic studies" to the Biophysics Group of the Optical Technology Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Mark H. Greene, M.D., Chief of CGB, presented an educational session titled "Hereditary cancer syndromes: Beyond hereditary breast/ovarian and colorectal cancer" at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando, Florida and a lecture on "Cancer genomics for gynecologists" at the 2009 Gynecologic Oncology Group semiannual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

In June, Ann W. Hsing, Ph.D. (HREB), gave an invited talk on "Epidemiology in the 21st century" at the University of Pittsburgh.

In April, Hormuzd A. Katki, Ph.D. (BB), gave the alumnus keynote speech "From the magnet to a career in quantitative science" at the 2009 Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Research Convention at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland.

In May, Jill Koshiol, Ph.D., Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, gave an invited presentation titled "Primary human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening: How to triage HPV positive women with repeat HPV testing" during a Cochrane Workshop on Systematic Reviews on Prevention of Cervical Cancer at the 25th International Papillomavirus Conference in Malmö, Sweden.

Tram Kim Lam, Ph.D. (GEB), received the NCI Cancer Prevention Fellowship program's Merit Award in recognition of her scientific productivity and leadership in the field of cancer prevention and her contributions to and support of the fellowship program.

During June and August, Huilin Li, Ph.D. (BB), gave invited talks on "Adjusted maximum likelihood methods in small-area estimation and related problems" at the annual meeting of the International Chinese Statistical Association in San Francisco, California and on "Finding SNP associations with a secondary phenotype in genetic association studies" at the New Researchers in Statistics and Probability Conference in Washington, DC.

In May and June, Jennifer T. Loud, R.N., C.R.N.P., D.N.P. (CGB), gave presentations on the role of genetics and genomics in cancer prevention at the NIH Nurse Practitioner Special Interest meeting in Bethesda, Maryland; the inaugural Eastern Tennessee State University Cancer Control and Prevention Conference in Johnson City, Tennessee; and the Georgetown University Graduate School of Nursing & Health Studies in Washington, DC.

In May, Mary Lou McMaster, M.D. (GEB), chaired a scientific session and presented a talk on "Precursor disorders in Waldenström macroglobulinemia" at the Third International Patient-Physician Summit on Waldenström Macroglobulinemia in Boston, Massachusetts.

In April, Arthur Schatzkin, M.D., Dr.P.H., Chief of NEB, presented "Validation of surrogate endpoints: A cancer perspective" at the Institute of Medicine's workshop Qualification of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease in Washington, DC. In June, he co-chaired the Validation Studies of Recovery Biomarkers for Dietary Intake and Physical Activity Session and presented findings from the Observing Protein and Energy Nutrition Study at the International Conference on Diet and Activity Methods in Washington, DC.

At the March International Congress on Occupational Health in South Africa, OEEB led the session Integration of Classic and Molecular Epidemiologic Approaches to Studying Occupational Cancer. OEEB Chief Debra T. Silverman, Sc.D., Sc.M., chaired the session. Nathaniel Rothman, M.D., M.P.H., M.H.S., and Dr. Silverman presented an overview; Laura Beane Freeman, Ph.D., discussed "Occupational formaldehyde exposure and leukemia" and "Classical and molecular cancer epidemiology in the Agricultural Health Study"; Qing Lan, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., spoke about "Occupational exposure to trichloroethylene and lymphocyte subset toxicity"; and Patricia A. Stewart, Ph.D., gave a talk titled "Organic solvents and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma: Using a module-based approach to exposure assessment in a case-control study."

In June, Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D. (NEB), spoke on "Development of dietary intake software for three regions of India" at the International Conference on Diet and Activity Methods in Washington, DC. In July, she spoke on the relationship between meat-related compounds and cancer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in Bronx, New York and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

In April, Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon, M.P.H., Ph.D. (NEB), gave an invited talk titled "Pancreatic cancer: Is there a link with diabetes and insulin resistance?" at the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research Grand Rounds at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Maryland.

In May, Rose Yang, Ph.D., M.P.H. (GEB), spoke on "Germ-line copy number variations in melanoma-prone families without known mutations" at the World Congress on Melanoma and at the Congress of the European Association of Dermato-Oncology in Vienna, Austria.

In May, Regina G. Ziegler, Ph.D., M.P.H., Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program, gave an invited presentation on "A new approach to measuring steroid hormone exposure and metabolism in epidemiologic studies" at the International Steroid Analytics Meeting in Munich, Germany.