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In October, Laura Dawson, MD, a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, began a 1-year term as president of the American Society for Radiation Oncology at the organization' s virtual annual meeting. She succeeded Thomas J. Eichler, MD. Dawson, who is also a radiation oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, specializes in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. She leads a group at Princess Margaret studying upper GI malignancies and serves on the NCI GI Intergroup Hepatobiliary Task Force.

This month, Patrick Hwu, MD, will begin his role as president and CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL. Most recently, Hwu was the division head of cancer medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Previously, he served as chair of the Department of Sarcoma Medical Oncology and co-director of the Center for Cancer Immunology Research at MD Anderson. A melanoma expert, Hwu' s work focuses on vaccines, adoptive T-cell therapies, and immunotherapy combinations, as well as resistance to immunotherapies. He helped develop CAR T-cell therapy.

Karen Knudsen, PhD, MBA, began a 2-year term as president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes in October, succeeding Roy Jensen, MD. Knudsen is the executive vice president of oncology services and enterprise director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson and chair of the Department of Cancer Biology at Thomas Jefferson University, both in Philadelphia, PA. Her research focuses on understanding genomic drivers of prostate cancer and developing new treatments for advanced disease.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/CDNews.