PLANNING AND EVALUATION CORE This section describes the Planning and Evaluation Core. The overall goal of the Planning and Evaluation Core is to assess the progress of the collaboration. Toward that end, the Planning and Evaluation Core will review the various components of the partnership to ensure that the goals and objectives of the collaboration are met. The committees established in this Core will meet regularly to review and establish short- and longterm goals, progress of the projects, and will review new pilot projects for the development Core. A. Internal Processes The Internal Advisory Committee (IAC) is comprised of scientists at the FHCRC and NMSU. Each individual was selected based on his/her knowledge and expertise of areas related to this application. The IAC membership is briefly described below. New Mexico State University Members Carl Kendall. Dr. Kendall is the new holder of the Stan Fulton Endowed Chair in Health Disparities and director for the Southwest Center for Health Disparities Research. He also serves as Associate Dean for Research for the College of Health and Social Services at NMSU. Kendall is new to NMSU after a career at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in Louisiana, and The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Pubic Health. Dr. Kendall received the distinguished research faculty award from Tulane for 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. He has collaborated with colleagues at the Tulane Cancer Center and the Louisiana Cancer Consortium where he mentored junior faculty to develop proposals to enhance breast cancer screening among African-American populations. He has collaborated with colleagues in more than 40 countries to address global problems of maternal and childhood illnesses, vector-borne diseases, and HIV/AIDS. Currently Kendall manages projects in eight countries with full-time staff in four of those countries. Dr. Kendall is fluent in Spanish and has taught university graduate courses in Spain and Guatemala. Vimal Chaitanya, Before becoming the NMSU Vice President for Research Graduate Studies and International Programs in July 2006, Dr. Chaitanya was the director of the Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center (AMPAC) at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He was also the director of UCF's Materials Science and Engineering program and its Materials Characterization Facility. Dr. Chaitanya received the University of Central Florida's Research Achievement Award in 2002 and the UCF Leadership Award in 1999. He is a five-time winner of his academic department's Researcher of the Year award. He has a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a master's degree in bioengineering from Clemson University in South Carolina, and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from M.S. University of Baroda, India. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Members Harmit S. Malik. Dr. Malik is an Assistant Member at the FHCRC and an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Dr. Malik's lab is interested in evolutionary studies of genetic conflict to gain insights into their mechanisms and consequences. Genomes are a tenuous conglomerate of different genetic entities, each trying to maximize their own evolutionary success, often at great cost to their genomic neighbors. This can create problems for the host organism. To gain insights into these mechanisms, Dr. Malik's lab studies centromeres, mobile genetic elements, and rapidly evolving proteins in Drosophila. Dr. Malik will provide great expertise in biology and the drosophila studies. Julian Simon. Dr. Simon is an Associate Member at the FHCRC and an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program at the University of Washington.
The aim of his lab is to identify new anticancer drugs. This is done through using the genetic context of the cancer cell as the drug target. The second broad strategy is to use chemical genetics to find better anticancer drugs. Other projects in the lab include the study of genetic interactions of mismatch repair mutants with ribonucleotide reductase as a strategy for the identification of drugs for the treatment of tumors with mismatch repair defects. Dr. Simon was involved in the U56 and has excellent understanding of how the collaboration operates. Ad Hoc Members Whenever there is a call for new proposals within the U54 collaboration, a """"""""study section"""""""" will be convened to review and critique the proposals. We followed this format during the U56 award and found this to be an effective way to match proposals with expertise in the areas covered by the proposal. Members from both institutions will be identified and recruited by the IAC to review proposals (see below). These reviewers will form a study section to discuss and rank the proposals received and to make recommendations for improvements. External Activities: The Program Steering Committee (PSC) Five members have been selected to serve on the PSC. They will act as advisors to the lead Pis and the NCI Project Officer. They have been selected for their skills in specific areas. Each is described below. Sonia C Flores, Ph.D. Dr. Sonia Flores is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, CO. She is also the Director of the UCHSC Graduate Training for Multicultural Students Summer Internship Program. Her research interests include examination of HIV-1 Tat transcriptional protein and its pro-inflammatory effects on endothelial cells, oxidant/antioxidant balance in HIV infection, molecular mechanisms of human Mn-superoxide dismutase repression by HIV-1 Tat protein, and redox modulation of transcriptional factor activity. She has written numerous articles on these topics. Dr. Flores also serves as the advisor to a summer internship program for graduates in biology. Dr. Flores has been on the PSC for the past three years and has made invaluable contributions to some of the basic science projects. J. Victor Garcia-Martinez, Ph.D. Dr. Garcia-Martinez is a professor in the departments of Internal Medicine and Microbiology at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX. He is nationally known for his skills in virology and molecular biology. His current work focuses on HIV, AIDS, and viral pathogenesis, with an emphasis on understanding the host pathogen relationship at the molecular level. From that understanding, he develops rational approaches to therapy and vaccine development. Another major interest for Dr. Garcia-Martinez is cell and gene therapy. In his laboratory, highly efficient gene transfer systems have been developed. Focusing on the human hematopoietic stem cell, his lab has developed a xenograft model to reconstitute the human hematopoietic system in immune deficient mice, allowing an excellent way to evaluate some gene therapy approaches. Dr. Garcia-Martinez received his training in Mexico, at the FHCRC, at NIH, and at MIT. He has been on the PSC for the past five years and served as PSC chair for two years, making outstanding contributions. George Hammons, Ph.D. Dr. George Hammons is Professor of Chemistry at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he has chaired the Department for the past eighteen years. He was also Director of the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program at Philander Smith for twelve years. In addition to his active engagement in the training of undergraduate students in chemistry and other sciences, he has also developed out-reach activities for junior high and high school students to encourage their participation and development in the sciences. After completing the undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematics at Philander Smith, he received his doctoral training in biochemistry at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has had research interest in the area of chemical carcinogenesis; and more recently, his research has focused on the potential role of dietary agents in cancer chemoprevention and on epigenetics in the regulation of xenobioticmetabolizing enzymes. Dr. Hammons has served on the PSC for the past two years and has made excellent contributions to the chemistry projects. Sally Vernon, Ph.D. Dr. Vernon is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX and the Director of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences there. She has a long history of working in public health with the Latino population. She specializes in designing behavioral interventions to increase participation in cancer screening, including interventions to increase participation in breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening. Her work has resulted in some key publications on barriers to screening. Dr. Vernon also conducts studies of informed decision making for prostate cancer screening. She does research on the psychosocial aspects of cancer genetic testing, seeking out motivations for having or not having genetic testing. Dr. Vernon has been on the PSC for the past four years and has made outstanding contributions, especially to the public health projects. N. David Yanez, Ph.D. Dr. Yanez is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics and the Director of the Graduate Program in Biostatistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Dr. Yanez's research interests include analysis of overdispersed data, joint modeling of mean and dispersion parameters, and quasi-likelihood models. His research has included examination of the costs of health care utilization, numerous articles on the effects of cardiovascular disease, and the examination of statistical errors in longitudinal data. He also has collaborated on a careful assessment of the effects of clinical trials on clinical practice. Dr. Yanez has participated in a number of clinical trials and is well-known for his expertise in applied biostatistics. In short, Dr. Yanez has a broad understanding of biostatistics as they apply to many different areas of interest. In addition, Dr. Yanez has been the faculty sponsor for L'PROGRESO, an organization of graduate and professional Latino students of the sciences at the University of Washington since 1995. He has been key in providing mentorship for Latino students. Dr. Yanez has been on the PSC since the U56 was funded and has made outstanding contributions.
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