Previously Spotlighted Scientists

Amy Berrington de Gonzalez

REB is pleased to announce the appointment of Amy Berrington de Gonzalez, Ph.D. as a new tenure-track investigator. Dr. Berrington de Gonzalez received a Ph.D. in Cancer Epidemiology from the University of Oxford in 2001. She conducted post-doctoral research in Oxford before joining the faculty there. In 2005 she moved to become an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Berrington de Gonzalez’s research is primarily focused on how to use epidemiological data to quantify the cancer risks related to medical radiation exposures especially due to diagnostic X-rays and CT scans. She is also interested in the cancer-related risks from new radiotherapy technologies including intensity-modulated radiotherapy and proton therapy.

Amy Berrington de Gonzalez’s full biography

Lindsay Morton

REB is pleased to announce the appointment of Lindsay Morton, Ph.D. as a new tenure-track investigator. In 2004, Dr. Morton received her doctorate in Epidemiology from Yale University, with a focus on cancer epidemiology. She subsequently joined the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch in DCEG as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and became a Research Fellow in 2005. During her doctoral and postdoctoral training, she concentrated her research on the etiology of lymphoid neoplasms and expanded her training in molecular epidemiology.

As a tenure-track investigator, Dr. Morton will continue to research the etiology of lymphoid neoplasms, focusing on identifying the molecular subtypes of lymphoma with prognostic and etiologic significance, and evaluating etiologic heterogeneity among lymphoma subtypes. In addition, she will expand her research to the study of multiple primary cancers, including investigating late effects from radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as well as shared risk factors for multiple primary malignancies. In this new area of research for Dr. Morton, will take a lead role in REB’s international, multi-center study of second gastrointestinal cancers.

Lindsay Morton’s full biography

Rochelle Curtis

Rochelle Curtis, a research statistician in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch, was the lead editor on a recently published NCI monograph. The report, entitled New Malignancies Among Cancer Survivors: SEER Cancer Registries, 1973-2000 is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the risk of developing a new malignancy in the U.S. population. The 500-page monograph utilized data from nine cancer registries participating in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program from 1973 to 2000. More than 50 adult and 18 childhood cancer sites were included in the new report which provides detailed data on the risk of subsequent cancer by time since diagnosis, gender, age at initial diagnosis, and for certain cancer sites, by treatment and histologic type. Each chapter focuses on a specific initial cancer, presents the risk of second cancers, and discusses potential causal mechanisms. “The monograph provides a resource that will be useful to clinicians, researchers, policy makers, and cancer survivors, especially in tailoring appropriate guidelines and strategies for prevention and early detection of new malignancies,” said Ms. Curtis. Other studies have evaluated risk of subsequent cancers for individual cancer types or groups of cancers, usually related to the late effects of treatment, but this report provides the first complete evaluation of subsequent cancer risk in the U.S.

Ms. Curtis is also the lead investigator on an international study of second cancers following bone marrow transplantation (BMT), involving 350 transplant teams from around the world, and nearly 30,000 transplant recipients. This unique study quantifies the late cancer effects of whole-body irradiation, intensive chemotherapy, and severe immune suppression. Her other research studies have focused on risk factors for multiple primary cancers and therapy-related second cancers, with particular emphasis on breast cancer and childhood cancers.

Ms. Curtis' biography

Ms. Curtis' publications

Ethel Gilbert

Dr. Gilbert, a biostatistician in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch, served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) Committee, which recently published an extensive report on health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation. As part of her work on the committee, Dr. Gilbert used data on Japanese atomic bomb survivors and from studies of persons exposed for medical reasons to develop models for estimating risks of cancer from low level radiation exposure. She notes that “It was a rewarding experience to work with scientists in many disciplines on a subject that is of considerable public interest.”

Dr. Gilbert also studies workers at the Mayak nuclear plant in Russia. These workers were exposed to both protracted external radiation and to plutonium at levels that were much higher than those from similar operations in the U.S. and other countries. She also analyzes data from studies of second cancers after radio- and chemotherapy.

Summary of BEIR VII report (pdf, 163kb)

Full text of the BEIR VII report

News conference upon publication of findings (videocast)

Biography of Dr. Ethel Gilbert