Dateline DFCI
New Dana-Farber staff members demonstrate expertise in leadership development, genomics, and melanoma care
Left to right: Janet Porter, PhD, greets staff members Linda Carberry and Cheryl Adamick during Porter's first weeks on the job.
Janet Porter, PhD, had been using Dana-Farber as a model of quality patient care and leadership in her teaching around the country, and now she's here to help take the Institute to its next organizational level. As its new chief operating officer (COO), Porter oversees daily operations and also works closely with collaborating Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital Boston.
"It's incredibly exciting for me to have the opportunity to help the Dana-Farber team advance its goal of becoming the nation's model cancer center," says Porter, who succeeds longtime COO Jim Conway, now a senior fellow with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, among his activities. A nationally known figure in leadership development, Porter previously was an associate dean at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, and before that, a chief operating officer of Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Porter is not the only recent newcomer to Dana-Farber. Among other appointments, John Quackenbush, PhD, joined the faculty to expand DFCI's expertise in "gene chip" research and build strength in computational biology. Quackenbush, who brought with him nine colleagues from The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland, has been recognized for creating mathematical tools and software to manage and interpret the massive amounts of data obtained through microarrays, used to scan the genetic material inside cells.
In another change, Dana-Farber's Melanoma Program got a boost with the appointment of Philip Friedlander, MD, PhD, who came to the Institute from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He has experience in caring for patients with this potentially fatal skin cancer and has conducted basic and clinical research on malignant melanoma.
