Robert Vonderheide Appointed to Second Five-Year Term as Director of the Abramson Cancer Center
Robert H. Vonderheide has been appointed to a second five-year term as director of the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) at the University of Pennsylvania, following a highly successful tenure that saw 17 FDA approvals in oncology for therapies based on studies led or co-led by ACC investigators, high-impact basic and translational research discoveries, expansion of radiation oncology services to new sites across the Philadelphia region, and development of new methods for live tumor imaging during surgeries. Under his leadership, the ACC has also launched new cancer home care and telemedicine programs, as well as initiatives that drove improvements in germline genetic testing, cancer screenings, and clinical trial participation by minority patients. Dr. Vonderheide will also continue in his roles as Vice President for Cancer Programs in the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Vice Dean for Cancer Programs in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
In the next phase of his leadership, Dr. Vonderheide will build on the development of pathways to ensure that, amid the increasingly complex landscape of cancer care and research, patients across the entire health system are able to access leading-edge Penn Medicine care no matter where they live. Among key examples already underway: proton therapy at Lancaster General Health and Virtua Health in New Jersey, both set to open this year; sub-specialty surgery consultation at outpatient sites and Penn Medicine’s regional hospitals; and telemedical options for genetic counseling and CAR T cell therapy and bone marrow transplant evaluation and education.
“Patients can expect an exceptional experience at every location across our health system—a place they are cared for by the most committed staff, specialized nurses, and top physician experts,” said University of Pennsylvania Health System CEO Kevin B. Mahoney. “Now, we are harmonizing that patient experience to ensure that every patient has the most seamless care and robust options across different sites of care, and the assistance to navigate easily between them. Under Dr. Vonderheide’s leadership, we are ensuring that every patient has every opportunity for the most personalized treatment and the very best chance at a cure through every door they enter across Penn Medicine.”
Dr. Vonderheide’s renewal as ACC director includes a five-year, $130 million investment from the health system to provide resources and infrastructure to unify all missions of cancer care and research across Penn Medicine.
Growing access to cancer clinical trials is a key area of focus that will happen through the development of a cancer clinical trials network, including more opportunities for patients at Penn Medicine’s regional hospitals to participate in clinical trials being led at the ACC’s main campus sites in Philadelphia, and the expansion of other trial sites closer to patients’ homes. Additional efforts will harness the power of Penn’s unified electronic health record, from new approaches to involve patients in the Penn Medicine BioBank to the expansion of programs providing patients with “e-nudges” to schedule mammograms and other tests and appointments through the MyPennMedicine portal.
“This is a time of exciting, unprecedented momentum for cancer care and research,” said J. Larry Jameson, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System. “The cancer death rate has dropped faster in the past two years than ever before, due in part to the development of prevention strategies and of targeted and immunotherapies for an array of diseases. Dr. Vonderheide embodies that momentum as an exceptional collaborator who brings experts together across different disciplines to focus efforts on the most innovative ways to meet our shared goals of driving cancer discovery and improving patient care.”
The ACC has continuously been designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 1974, one of 52 such centers in the United States. It is among the nation’s most highly ranked cancer centers, providing care to adults during more than 300,000 outpatient visits annually across the six-hospital Penn Medicine Cancer System, as well as delivering more than 190,000 outpatient infusion therapies, over 130,000 radiation treatments, and 330 stem cell transplants each year. The ACC was rated as “exceptional” during its competitive research funding review, the highest possible merit rating for an NCI Cancer Center.
Dr. Vonderheide is a leading authority in cancer immunology, leading a lab and clinical research focused on immunotherapies and vaccines for pancreatic, breast, and other cancers. He serves on the boards of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research, the Association of American Cancer Institutes, and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. He is a member of the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors.
In a spirited event that packed the auditorium of the Henry C. Lea Elementary School, officials from Lea, the President’s Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn GSE, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and the School District of Philadelphia celebrated the formalization of Penn’s deepened commitment to supporting the West Philadelphia K-8 school.
Quoting University of Pennsylvania’s founder, Ben Franklin, Interim President Pritchett noted that, “He said, ‘Investment in knowledge pays the best interest.’ The best way to spend our time, money, and effort is helping students learn. That’s why we’re all here today. The agreement we’re celebrating is going to help all of us realize our vision for accelerating progress underway at Lea.”
Robert T. Wilson, D’64, a former faculty member in Penn Dental Medicine’s department of oral medicine, passed away on February 19 following a courageous battle with cancer. He was 83.
Dr. Barber is one of two fellows selected in the category of architecture, planning & design. He is a specialist in environmental histories of architecture. His most recent book, Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning, published in 2020, explores how leading architects of the 20th century took daily and seasonal climate patterns into account. He argues that climate emerged as an interdisciplinary framework for the production of a new kind of socio-ecological knowledge. Dr. Barber’s Guggenheim project, Thermal Practices, is focused on how to live in buildings after fossil-fuel energy sources are no longer socially viable. The project sees the “thermal interior” as a space concerned both with the engineered precision of comfort and with how novel techniques and habits can reduce energy demand. Dr. Barber’s teaching at Penn encourages architecture students to approach the climate emergency as a core issue in their design and scholarship. Currently on leave from Penn, he is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg in Germany.
Dr. Bowes, the single recipient in the category of classics, works on the archaeology and material culture of the Roman world. Her research focuses not on the elite class living in the Roman Empire but instead on what she calls “the other 90 percent,” the lived experience of the working poor and the economies that dominated their lives. She was the editor and primary writer of a two-volume book published in 2021, The Roman Peasant Project 2009-2015: Excavating the Roman Rural Poor, which documents the six-year archaeological excavation in Italy that Dr. Bowes co-directed with a team from Penn, with Italian partners. The research and the resulting book examine the spaces, architecture, diet, agriculture, market interactions, and movement of rural dwellers in a region of southern Tuscany during the Roman period. Continuing her research, Dr. Bowes is now working on a new book tentatively titled Getting by Under the Roman Empire: An Economic History of the 90%, which will look at the opportunities and stresses experienced by working people.
Dr. Ramsey, one of two fellows selected in the category of music research, is a music historian, pianist, and composer. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ramsey is the author, co-author, or editor of four music history books and biographies, most recently The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price in 2020. He is the founding editor of the blog Musiqology.com, and previously was the editor of the series Music of the African Diaspora at the University of California Press. Dr. Ramsey hosts The MusiQology Podcast, and MusiQology Rx is his community arts initiative that provides arts programming to under-served communities. As a producer, label head, and leader of the band Dr. Guy’s MusiQology, Dr. Ramsey has released multiple recording projects and has performed at venues across the United States. He also works in film, having produced and scored several documentaries and music videos. He also has written for and consulted with museums and galleries on exhibitions involving music history.
Dr. Saint-Amour, one of five fellows selected in the category of literary criticism, works on 19th- and 20th-century British literature and has special interests in the novel, law, trauma, visual culture, and the environmental humanities. His most recent book, Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form, published in 2015, won the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize and the Modern Language Association’s first Matei Calinescu Prize. Dr. Saint-Amour is a trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation and sits on the faculty editorial board of the University of Pennsylvania Press and the supervising committee of the English Institute. His editorial work includes the collection Modernism & Copyright and the Modernist Latitudes book series at Columbia University Press. He is currently at work on two projects: Attack Decay Sustain Release, a series of personal essays organized around acoustic, pneumatic, and electronic keyboard instruments; and a book-length study of human ethical and aesthetic obligation to the nonhuman called Does a Cliff Have a Face?
Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA and the Basser Professor in Oncology, has been elected to the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Nominating Committee for the 2022-2023 term. The committee is comprised of advisors who oversee the yearly nomination and election processes for classes of fellows.
Rishi Goel, a second-year student in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Kingson Lin, who graduated with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Arts & Sciences in 2017, have each received a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which provides graduate school funding for immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. 
