Director - Center for Advanced Therapeutics

The Wistar Institute is a world leader in early-stage discovery science in the areas of cancer, immunology, and infectious disease. Wistar is committed to accelerating research advances from bench to bedside through brilliant science and distinctive approaches to collaboration among scientific investigators and academic and industry partners. Wistar’s dynamic environment supports the advancement of discoveries that will change the future of human health.

Wistar Center for Advanced Therapeutics. Designated as a key priority in Wistar’s 2021-2026 Bold Science // Global Impact Strategic Plan and backed by a successful philanthropic capital campaign, the Institute launched a new Center for Advanced Therapeutics in 2024. The Center builds on a long-standing and highly successful institutional track record of rigorous mechanistic research seamlessly aligned with translational and disease-relevant goals. The Center is expected to bridge research areas in both the Cancer Center and Wistar’s Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center, pursue mechanistic and translational research objectives, leverage Wistar state-of-the-art core facilities and utilize an internal accelerator funding mechanism to advance the preclinical characterization of promising new research findings. The Center will have access to a fully developed and proven infrastructure for business development and technology transfer, licensing, and externalization of research assets through early-stage startup ventures. Against this backdrop, the Center will occupy 12,000 square feet of new, state-of-the-art laboratory space that is currently under construction on the Wistar main campus and expected to be completed in May of 2025. The Center will be home to six new primary faculty members to be directly recruited as part of this initiative.

Director, Center for Advanced Therapeutics. To lead the new Center, The Wistar Institute is seeking an exceptional and visionary candidate with a long and proven track record of mechanistic and translational cancer research. The successful candidate will be at the rank of Full Professor at a leading research university or institute, carry substantial NIH/NCI extramural funding and lead a productive independent research program. Reporting solely to the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Wistar Institute, the Director will be appointed as the Christopher M. Davis Chair in Cancer Research at the rank of Full Professor and will also be named Executive Vice-President at The Wistar Institute. Generous start-up packages will be made available to support the Director’s own research laboratory as well as the recruitment of five primary faculty members of the new Center. The Director will ultimately craft a vision for the Center, decide research areas, lead faculty recruitment and identify themes of further collaboration and integration with other Wistar Centers. As a new research leader, the Director will work with the President and CEO and other institutional officials to ensure the broadest visibility of the Center, expand its scientific footprint, unlock opportunities for public-private partnerships and act as an ambassador of the scientific mission of the Center and the Institute as a whole. This is a premiere opportunity supported by considerable resources, new research space, and firm commitment by The Wistar Institute and its Board of Trustees to lead a unique scientific initiative, ideally poised to accelerate the path of discovery and translation of new findings in cancer research.

The Institute offers a state-of-the-art vivarium and access to outstanding core facilities in proteomics and metabolomics, genomics, microscopy, high-throughput molecular screening, spatial transcriptomics, medicinal chemistry, bioinformatics, and flow cytometry, humanized mouse models, among others. The Institute’s location adjacent to the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Drexel University, provides for a wonderful work and living environment for vigorous academic and clinical collaborations.  Wistar is a very attractive destination for training opportunities for undergraduate, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows.

Applications will be reviewed as received and will be accepted until the position is filled. To ensure timely consideration, applications will be reviewed using a rolling format. The application should include: a curriculum vitae, a summary of past and future research interests (no more than 3 pages), and history of accomplishments, talks and research funding support (as applicable). Applications (submitted as a single PDF) should be sent by e-mail to: Maria Colelli, Faculty Search Coordinator, (mcolelli@wistar.org), The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

For more information about The Wistar Institute please visit our website at www.wistar.org.

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