Vaurice L. Starks
Program Director, Methods and Technologies Branch
Contact Information
Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
National Cancer Institute
6130 Executive Blvd., Rm. 5104, MSC 7395
Bethesda, MD 20892-7395
(For express delivery, use Rockville, MD 20852)
telephone: (301) 402-9375
fax: (301) 402-4279
e-mail: starksv@mail.nih.gov
Interest Areas
Infectious disease epidemiology (e.g., HIV/AIDS- and HPV-related malignancies), cancer epidemiology and health disparities.
Degrees
B.S. - Microbiology
University of Maryland, College Park
Ms. Starks is currently pursuing graduate studies in cancer epidemiology.
Biography
Ms. Starks is a Program Director in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program's (EGRP) Modifiable Risk Factors Branch (MRFB). She is responsible for the management of a research portfolio on cancer risk factors that may be modifiable, such as infectious diseases associated with malignancies, and focuses chiefly on human papillomavirus (HPV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Ms. Starks also is the scientific contact for two Program Announcements to encourage research on malignancies in the context of HIV/AIDS (PA-07-455 and PA-07-454) and is a member of the internal NCI AIDS Working Group. In 2008, she co-chaired a forum on AIDS-related research at NCI.
Ms. Starks is a member of the NCI Review Committee for the Genetic Association Information Network
(GAIN), which supports a series of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) designed to identify specific points of DNA variation associated with the occurrence of a particular common disease. She co-founded the Trans-NCI Extramural Awareness Group (TEAG) and is the representative for the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS). She is a member of a DCCPS subcommittee to NCI's Division of Extramural Activities for implementation of enhancements to the NIH peer review process. Ms. Starks also is an NCI mentor.
Prior to joining EGRP in 1999, Ms. Starks worked in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) Division of AIDS as a Co-Program Officer of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), which are co-funded with NCI. As Co-Program Officer, she was a member of both the MACS and WIHS Executive Committees and served on several working groups. Ms. Starks also worked in NCI's intramural Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology as a Microbiologist and on characterizing the role of erbB-3, a novel epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor-like transmembrane protein isolated in the laboratory. She used eukaryotic expression vectors transfected into fibroblasts and epithelial cells to study the biological effects of in vitro over expression of the erbB-3 protein. She constructed chimerae molecules of known biological and biochemical properties to determine the functions of individual domains of erbB-3, including tyrosine kinase and ligand-binding domains.
