Department of Medicine

SECT Program Leadership

Master
Terms

Aaron Thrift, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Thrift’s research aims to identify lifestyle and genetic risk factors for gastrointestinal cancers and pre-cancerous conditions, and derive models for better patient risk stratification.

Hoda J. Badr, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Badr is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine and leads the Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program in the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research seeks to identify the cancer care needs of patients and their family caregivers, assess factors that influence cancer care implementation and outcomes, and address disparate outcomes of care through the development, implementation and evaluation of multilevel interventions.

Philip Lupo, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Lupo is a co-principal investigator in the Systems Epidemiology of Cancer Training Program and an associate professor in the Section of Hematology-Oncology in the Department of Pediatrics. As director of the Epidemiology Program in the Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers and chair of the Epidemiology Committee in the Children’s Oncology Group, Dr. Lupo has a particular interest in cancer predisposition among children. He has mentored or co-mentored over 25 trainees, who collectively have greater than 50 peer-reviewed publications, as well as independent funding from various sources including the National Institutes of Health, Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Christopher Amos, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Amos is a renowned genetic epidemiologist, director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at BCM and associate director of Population and Quantitative Sciences of the Cancer Center. He was the 2020 recipient of the AACR–ACS award for Cancer Epidemiology. Dr. Amos has developed novel approaches for evaluating population structure in large datasets and characterizing multivariate effects on disease risk. He has also developed simulation approaches that allow new algorithms to be stress tested against underlying assumptions.  He has led several large-scale national and international consortia.

Elaine Symanski, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Symanski is professor in the Center of Precision Environmental Health and director of the Program in Population and Environmental Health Disparities. She is director of a funded NIMHD P50 Environmental Health Disparities Center and deputy director of the NIEHS P30 Gulf Coast Center for Precision Environmental Health (GC-CPEH) where she also directs the GC-CPEH Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core that provides access to next-gen technologies. Trained in epidemiology and exposure science, she is an expert in the development and application of quantitative methods for modeling occupational and environmental exposures and investigations into associated health effects, among vulnerable and underserved populations.  

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Members of the Internal Advisory Committee

Terms

Cheryl Walker, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Walker is the Internal Advisory Committee chair and a professor in the departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. She is also director of the Center for Precision Environmental Health and the NIEHS T32 Training Program in Precision Environmental Health Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Walker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Jeff Rosen, Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Rosen is a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Smith Breast Center. He is also the program leader of the Breast Program in the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center and directs the CPRIT Comprehensive Cancer Training Program in Cancer Biology at Baylor.

Jason Yustein, M.D., Ph.D.

Item Definition

Dr. Yustein is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology and the Department of Pediatrics for Baylor College of Medicine.