Following departmental strategic planning, the Pathology & Immunology Office of Faculty Development (OFD) was founded in 2020. OFD supports our departmental core values (excellence, respect, inclusion, and diversity), and the mission of the OFD is to support a thriving and diverse department with professionally happy and healthy faculty who are productive, well recognized, and respected within the Washington University School of Medicine and within academic pathology & immunology globally. The OFD has been led by Ann Grownowski and Carey-Ann Burnham, who has developed a program that is now an essential part of the fabric of our department, and a transformative resource for our faculty. As all of you are aware, Ann has taken on the role of interim chief, LGM, and Carey-Ann will be leaving in March to pursue an exciting new direction in her illustrious career.
I am delighted to announce that Dr. Mark Watson has agreed to serve as the Vice Chair of Faculty Development in the Department of Pathology and Immunology (P&I), starting April 1, 2022. Mark is currently Director of the Siteman Cancer Center Tissue Procurement Core Facility and Director of the NCTN Alliance Biorepositories and Biospecimen Resource.
Mark first joined the Department in 1992 as a clinical pathology resident. He is currently a Professor of Pathology and Immunology in the Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine. His research lab is focused on the discovery and validation of genomic markers to predict metastatic tumor behavior in patients with breast and lung cancer, with a more recent focus on circulating genomic tumor biomarkers. Over the past twenty years, he has developed and supervised numerous institutional and national NCI-funded biobanking and biospecimen informatics resources that promote translational cancer research and correlative biomarker studies in the context of oncology clinical trials.
Mark has served as an Officer (Research Liaison) for the Office of Faculty Development for the past year and is the departmental liaison for the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS). He is a member of several P&I junior faculty mentoring committees and has guided and mentored many undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and clinical fellows. Mark is a strong advocate of ‘team science’ and in this new role, he is particularly interested in ensuring that all department faculty with an interest in translational biomedical research can find the support, guidance, and resources that they need to realize their career goals.
Importantly, Janet Braun will continue in her role as program manager of the OFD, and will be assisting Mark in his new role.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Watson. I am delighted that he has accepted this position and look forward to working with him in this new role. And please join me in thanking Ann and Carey-Ann for the wonderful work they have done to create this important resource for our faculty.
Sincerely,
Richard Cote