School Notes: School of Medicine
January/February 2017

Chief diversity officer appointed

Darin A. Latimore has been appointed deputy dean for diversity and inclusion for the School of Medicine, effective January 2017. He will be the school’s inaugural chief diversity officer. Latimore will be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive plan for furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion at the school, including a robust recruitment, development, and retention program for faculty, students, and staff. He will coordinate with such groups as the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion (MORE), the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine (SWIM), the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice, and the Dean’s Advisory Council on LGBTQ Affairs. Latimore joins Yale from the University of California–Davis School of Medicine, where he was associate dean for student and resident diversity, overseeing medical student and resident diversity programs. He has developed initiatives to increase the pipeline of socioeconomically disadvantaged students, residents, and faculty, and has spearheaded programs to support and empower underrepresented students who are interested in attending medical school.

A novel approach to fighting cancer

Yale University researchers across a spectrum of disciplines are coming together to fight some of the deadliest forms of cancer with a novel approach that has gained support from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cancer Systems Biology @Yale (CaSB@Yale), based at the university’s West Campus, will use a $9.5 million NIH grant to understand how cancer cells reach an aggressive state and begin damaging surrounding tissue.

The initial focus will be on two particularly aggressive cancers: glioblastoma multiforme (brain cancer) and melanoma (skin cancer). The initiative combines expertise from a variety of Yale programs. The Yale Systems Biology Institute and the Yale Cancer Biology Institute on West Campus will join forces with the Raymond and Beverley Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, the Yale Cancer Center, and Emory University to address fundamental questions at the core of cancer biology, using a diverse set of approaches. Yale faculty from three schools and seven departments will be primary investigators at CaSB@Yale, with research backgrounds in genetics, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, biomedical engineering, oncology, pharmacology, biophysics, and mathematics.