Overcoming Critical Barriers: The Importance of Inclusion and Diversity in Clinical Trials

Add to iCal Calendar 0

Date/Time
Date(s) - 18 Sep 2020
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Location


Overcoming Critical Barriers

The Importance of Inclusion and Diversity in Clinical Trials

Join the conversation on how we can foster greater diversity in our industry, inclusion in our operations, and understanding across our community.

Date: Friday, September 18,2020

Time:  9:00 – !0:00 AM Z/MST/PDT

This is a free virtual event that is available to signup for via your AZBW app after registration.

Presented Virtually Via Zoom

Register for this and other free Arizona Bioscience Week Educational Events via the AZBW 2020 App

Register for AZBW 2020

SPEAKERS:

Francisco A. Moreno, MD, Associate Vice President for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, University of Arizona Health Sciences

Francisco A. Moreno, MD, is associate vice president for diversity and inclusion at the University of Arizona Health Sciences (UAHS), where he is responsible for creating a comprehensive network of meaningful diversity-and-inclusion initiatives, programs and strategies to improve the diversity of the health-care workforce statewide.  Dr. Moreno works to infuse diversity into the instruction and content of new and existing courses and coordinate and develop diversity training, in collaboration with health sciences colleges and centers and other university departments. In addition, he seeks to identify barriers to recruitment and retention of underrepresented populations and support strategies to overcome these barriers for students, faculty and staff. In addition to improving diversity in the biomedical workforce pipeline across the UAHS campus and beyond, Dr. Moreno continues to serve as professor of psychiatry at the UA College of Medicine – Tucson and oversee its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Arizona Hispanic Center of Excellence. (More)

Joann Sweasy, PhD, Director, University of Arizona Cancer Center , Nancy C. and Craig M. Berge Endowed Chair for the Director of the Cancer Center, Associate Director, Basic Sciences, Cancer Biology Program, Research Member

Dr. Sweasy earned her doctoral degree from Rutgers University, studying the role of the RecA protein in the SOS response to DNA damage, under the direction of Dr. Evelyn M. Witkin. She initiated her research on the fidelity of DNA synthesis at the University of Washington in Dr. Lawrence Loeb’s laboratory. After joining Yale University School of Medicine in 1993, she rose through the ranks to become the Ensign Professor of Therapeutic Radiology and Associate Director for Basic Sciences at the Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Sweasy is currently a tenured professor in Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, and Associate Director, Basic Sciences at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. 

Dr. Sweasy is an internationally recognized expert the genetics, cell biology, and biochemistry of DNA repair. For the past 25 years her laboratory has been consistently funded by the National Cancer Institute to study the molecular basis of mutagenesis and dysfunctional DNA repair as they relate to human diseases including cancer and autoimmunity. Dr. Sweasy’s research team recently discovered that dynamic conformational changes are important for accurate DNA synthesis. The team has also shown that human germline and somatic genetic variants of base excision repair genes are linked to carcinogenesis because they are unable to properly remove damaged DNA bases, leading to genomic instability, mitotic catastrophe, and other cancer-associated phenotypes. (More)