Office for Research leadership moves aim to boost impact, excellence

The Office for Research (OR) today announced several changes to its leadership team, enhancements that further strengthen OR’s support of Northwestern’s research enterprise, which continues to thrive and attract record levels of funding. The moves include staffing two existing senior positions — though restructuring the focus of one — and creating a new role. [Read also: Crista Brawley named new associate vice president for research.]

In announcing the news, Vice President for Research Milan Mrksich said the strategic efforts were aimed at increasing operational effectiveness and engagement among the research office and the University’s schools and units. “OR already is a strong, multifaceted team with a range of expertise that plays a catalytic part in facilitating Northwestern research,” Mrksich said. “We carefully assessed how to build on our strengths to continue delivering operational excellence that advances the University’s research mission. These leadership changes are part of our ongoing commitment to Northwestern’s world-class faculty and students.”

Eminent Feinberg School of Medicine physician Leonidas Platanias will join OR as an associate vice president, focusing on cancer programs. In this new role, he will oversee all cancer-related activities at Northwestern, including its affiliates. He will collaborate with school deans across the University to develop and coordinate plans for the recruitment of all new faculty whose work is focused on cancer. He also will oversee clinical cancer research throughout Northwestern and work to optimize University operations essential for such research, leading efforts to streamline cancer clinical trials operations for Northwestern faculty. Dr. Platanias is the Jesse, Sara, Andrew, Abigail, Benjamin and Elizabeth Lurie Professor of Oncology and Professor of Medicine (Hematology-Oncology) and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. He is well known for his research — investigations that span more than 30 years and 350 published papers. His work includes a focus on signaling pathways in cancer cells and developing therapies that target those pathways to treat malignancies. He also is recognized for his research involving cytokines, blood proteins that have important links to cancer and other diseases. Dr. Platanias will retain his current role as director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCC), a position he has held since 2014. Under his leadership, the Cancer Center has experienced dramatic growth, with doubling of its National Cancer Institute funding, increasing the number of patients enrolled in early-phase clinical trials, and the recruitment of many new faculty members. Under his leadership, LCC received the highest rating in its history, an overall exceptional and a near-perfect “impact” score on the last cancer center support grant renewal.

“I am excited about this newly created role in the Office of Research and I look forward to contributing in any way I can to the continued positive trajectory of Northwestern research that we have witnessed under the leadership of VPR Milan Mrksich,” Platanias said. “There are great opportunities and new goals in the biomedical research field that should help us further advance Northwestern as one of the very few top universities in the country.”

Bringing further strength to OR is Emma Adam, the Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Human Development and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Policy (SESP). She will serve as an associate vice president concentrating on the social sciences. Her addition to the team brings deep disciplinary insights to support research leadership’s continued engagement with an array of Northwestern investigations across fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, social policy, and more. Adam is also a faculty fellow at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR), one of 40 interdisciplinary research hubs at the University. An applied developmental psychobiologist, Adam studies how everyday life experiences influence levels of perceived and biological stress in adolescents and young adults. Her pathbreaking work, which has earned her distinction in her field, traces the ways by which stress contributes to youth outcomes. By using noninvasive methods, such as diary measures, measurement of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and measurement of sleep hours and quality, she identifies key factors that cause emotional and biological stress and the implications of stress for daily functioning, emotional and physical health, cognition, and academic outcomes. Her research has revealed racial and socioeconomic disparities in stress, cortisol, and sleep, with potential implications for understanding disparities in health and attainment. Such investigations are longstanding, and include her co-founding IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S) in 2005. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Adam’s expertise has helped shed light on how youth stress has been exacerbated by the global health and economic crisis.  Her research group is currently implementing multiple interventions designed to reduce youth stress and its consequences.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to join the Office for Research as an associate vice president for research,” Adam said. “Having a multidisciplinary social science background,  I particularly look forward to helping highlight and support the groundbreaking social science research being conducted at Northwestern. I also will explore new ways and new resources to bring the University’s researchers together to help understand and address the pressing social problems facing the world today.”

In addition, a current member of the OR leadership team — distinguished McCormick School of Engineering faculty member Jian Cao — has moved from her role as associate vice president for research to a new position. Cao now serves as chair of the recently established Office for Research Advisory Council (ORAC), a 12-member board composed of distinguished Northwestern faculty from across many schools and disciplines. ORAC is designed to help inform OR’s work by bringing a diversity of perspectives that provide insight into activity, opportunities, and challenges throughout the research enterprise. Likewise, the Council offers a forum for research leadership to engage with stakeholders in a timely and transparent way. The inspiration for ORAC derived from VPR Mrksich’s sustained engagement with various University stakeholders throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including department chairs, deans, faculty, and graduate students. Cao is the Cardiss Collins Professor of mechanical engineering whose research includes cutting-edge manufacturing innovations; she has made fundamental contributions to her field, notably to the characterization of the effects of material structure on forming behavior of metals and woven composites. The author of more than 300 technical articles and 10 book chapters, Cao also holds 15 patents and directs NIMSI, one of 40 cross-disciplinary University research institutes and centers that OR supports administratively.

“As an associate vice president for research for the past eight years, I’ve witnessed incredible success in Northwestern’s research enterprise,” Cao said. “I am now pleased to chair ORAC, a catalyst to advance strategic and operational excellence by further increasing faculty and administrative engagement.”

All the leadership positions above report to the vice president for research.

“I am delighted to welcome Leon and Emma to the OR leadership team, and to continue working with Jian in this important new capacity,” Mrksich said. “I am grateful to them for bringing their passion for research and administrative excellence to support our strategic approach to managing Northwestern’s impressive, growing research portfolio. The Office for Research is laser-focused on supporting our investigators and further increasing the University’s research impact and global reputation. Our leadership enhancements reinforce OR’s mission by facilitating greater connection and collaboration across our entire research community.”

By Matt Golosinski