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Shaping a structure

A photograph of Faye Austin, Ph.D.

Faye Austin, Ph.D.

The structure, shape, and organization of the center were hammered out in meetings of center members and leaders over a two-year period, beginning in 1998. What emerged was an entity unlike virtually every other Comprehensive Cancer Center in the country, notes Faye Austin, Ph.D., director for research at Dana-Farber and associate director for administration of the DF/HCC.

"We were planning something that is in many ways unprecedented," she remarks. "There is no other Comprehensive Cancer Center in the country that consists of as many large, free-standing institutions. Both we and the NCI team that reviewed our grant application had to think in new terms."

The application — all 1,360 pages of it — was read by the 26 members of the NCI team before they paid a two-and-a-half-day visit to Dana-Farber and Harvard in February 2000. The reviewers heard presentations on the cancer center's structure and operations, visited some of its facilities, talked with its researchers, and asked the hard questions that scientists are famous for posing to one another. Their report, which went through two internal reviews at the NCI, was crucial in determining the amount and duration of funding the center would receive.

"There is no other Comprehensive Cancer Center in the country that consists of as many large, free-standing institutions. Both we and the NCI team that reviewed our grant application had to think in new terms."

— Faye Austin, Ph.D., associate director for administration of DF/HCC

"The success of the center will be defined by its having translated new scientific information into major benefits, both for cancer patients and healthy populations at risk for developing cancer," Livingston remarks. "We're proud of what we've accomplished, and excited by the prospect of expanding the collaborative principle to additional disease programs in the years ahead." The stories in the Related articles section to your right highlight two of the hundreds of collaborative projects under way or soon to begin within the DF/HCC.

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Paths of Progress, Fall/Winter 2000

Paths of Progress Archive

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