Ross Named Board Chief Medical Advisor
Epidemiology Chair of Children's Oncology Group is named Children's Cancer Research Fund Chief Medical Advisor.
Julie Ross, Ph.D., professor and director of the University of Minnesota’s Division of Pediatric Epidemiology & Clinical Research, and The Cancer Center’s associate director for population sciences, has been named Children’s Cancer Research Fund’s Chief Medical Advisor. She holds this position along with John Wagner, M.D.
Focus on Genetic and Environmental Influences of Cancer
A Twin Cities native, Ross earned her bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees at the University of Minnesota, and in 1995 joined the University’s faculty to focus on childhood cancer research.
In addition to her training in epidemiology, Dr.Ross holds a Children’s Cancer Research Fund endowed Chair. She has considerable laboratory experience in molecular biology. She is the principal investigator of two National Cancer Institute grants investigating genetic and environmental mechanisms in cancer. She has had more than 100 articles about her research published in scientific journals.
A National Leader in Cancer Epidemiology
Besides her responsibilities at the University and with The Cancer Center, Ross is currently Chair of the Epidemiology Committee in the Children’s Oncology Group (C.O.G.), a consortium of hospitals and institutions in North America that treat approximately 90 percent of all children diagnosed with cancer. As Chair, Ross is overseeing the direction of epidemiological research of childhood cancer in C.O.G. She is the principal investigator of the Childhood Cancer Research Network within C.O.G., which is currently in development. The research network will serve as a childhood cancer registry in C.O.G. and will enroll children and their parents in order to facilitate studies on the causes and consequence of childhood cancer.