LEADERSHIP TEAM

Franziska Michor, PhD is the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Professor of Computational Biology and of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. Dr. Michor obtained her undergraduate training in mathematics and molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Austria, and her PhD from the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Afterwards, she was awarded a fellowship from the Harvard Society of Fellows. From 2007 until 2010, she was an Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Michor is the director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Evolution. She has been the recipient of the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Alice Hamilton Award, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, the 36th Annual AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, and others. Dr. Michor’s laboratory investigates the evolutionary dynamics of cancer initiation, progression, response to therapy, and emergence of resistance.
Thomas “Ollie” McDonald, PhD, serves as the Associate Director of the Center for Cancer Evolution in the Department of Data Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Thomas studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and obtained his PhD in Statistics at Rice University in Houston, Texas under the direction of Professor Marek Kimmel. During his time at Rice, Thomas spent a summer as a PhD student intern in the Modeling and Simulation Group of Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland working on nonparametric Bayesian Dose-Response Models for adverse effects. He served as a postdoctoral research fellow in Franziska Michor’s lab before moving to the Center for Cancer Evolution as a Research Associate. His main research interests are in branching processes and mathematical modeling of tumor evolution and heterogeneity in cancers.
David Pellman, MD, is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Professor of Cell Biology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Associate Director for Basic Science at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. He received undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Chicago. During medical school, he trained with Dr. Hidesaburo Hanafusa at the Rockefeller University. His postdoctoral fellowship was with Dr. Gerald Fink at the Whitehead Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Pellman’s awards include the Damon Runyon Scholar Award, the Stohlman Scholar Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, the E. Mead Johnson Award, and an NIH MERIT Award. He won the mentoring award from the Harvard Medical School graduate students. He is an elected Lifetime Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology, a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He received a 2024 NCI Outstanding Investigator Award and the 2024 AACR-G.H.A. Clowes Award for Outstanding Basic Cancer Research from the American Association for Cancer Research.

Dr. Pellman’s laboratory has made contributions to understanding cell division and how cell division errors drive rapid evolution of the genome. His group has uncovered mechanistic explanations for catastrophic mutational processes underlying genome alterations in cancer. His group’s accomplishments include: (1) the co-discovery of formin-dependent actin assembly and a mechanism for positioning mitotic spindles within asymmetrically dividing cells; (2) discoveries showing that whole genome duplication alters cell physiology, can promote evolutionary adaptation, and can drive tumor development; 3) the discovery of a mechanism explaining chromothripsis, a mutational process that generates extensive karyotype evolution in cancer and congenital disease.

Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, is Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and a co-leader of the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center Cancer Cell Biology Program. Dr. Polyak is an internationally recognized leader of breast cancer research. Her laboratory is dedicated to the study of human breast cancer with the goal of dissecting tumor evolution and use this information to improve the clinical management of breast cancer patients. Main areas of interests are: (1) breast cancer risk prediction and prevention, (2) drivers of tumor evolution, and (3) novel therapeutic targets. Dr. Polyak have received numerous awards including the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, and the 14th Rosalind E. Franklin Award for Women in Science. She is a recipient of the NCI Outstanding Investigator award (2015 and 2022) and received a Distinguished Alumna Award from Weil-Cornell in 2020. Dr. Polyak is a fellow of the AAAS and the AACR Academy, member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also an American Cancer Society Research Professor and received the 2023 AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research award.