Associate Vice Provost for Research Cindy Farach-Carson

Mary "Cindy" Farach-Carson became Rice's first Associate Vice Provost for Research (AVPR) and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology on July 1, 2009. She has a secondary appointment in Bioengineering and is a member of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering. This new position has a strong focus on building collaborations between Rice and local biomedical research and education institutions through the BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC), which opened in the summer of 2009 and which serves as a hub linking Rice researchers with their neighbors in the Texas Medical Center. A primary function of the AVPR is to build interdisciplinary research collaborations in the broad spectrum of biomedical and health research and education. The AVPR provides scientific leadership and vision for the BRC and also helps expand the ability of the Office of Research to support faculty research activities.

In addition to the George R. Brown School of Engineering and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, potential collaborations at Rice range from psychology and neuroscience in the School of Social Sciences to medical ethics in the School of Humanities and health-care and medical policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The new AVPR will oversee Rice's involvement with the newly forming Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and work with members of the Gulf Coast Consortia to facilitate cross-institutional collaborations.

As the founding director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research in Newark, Delaware, Farach-Carson established a formal alliance of the University of Delaware/Delaware Biotechnology Institute, the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center at Christiana Care and the Nemours/Al duPont Hospital for Children in 2005. The center fosters a fully functional academic and research partnership with the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University - the state of Delaware's official medical school. The CTCR serves the vital function of creating a coordinated network 'without walls' to transform clinical, educational and basic scientific efforts in translational cancer research within the state of Delaware into a cohesive effort aimed to reduce the impact of cancer on families and businesses throughout the state. She brought this experience and networking for teamwork based enterprise to her new role as AVPR.

Cindy's philosophy is based on her belief that including graduate and undergraduate students and postdoctoral fellows on these collaborative teams helps ensure that the projects are successful both in terms of research productivity and educational goals. Broadening the knowledge base among undergraduates who value the chance to do real science along with experiencing the joy of discovery has led many to apply for graduate programs in the field, thus fostering the next generation of scientists. Also important to interdisciplinary research is developing the infrastructure and paperwork to make such projects easy so that researchers do not have to start from scratch each time they want to initiate a study or write a protocol. The Office of Research is aiming to create templates for various federal applications and approvals that will lower the boundaries for interdisciplinary work in areas outside of the researchers' traditional "comfort zones."

Cindy is a researcher herself, which benefits her administrative role with fostering collaborations. She started out as a bone biologist and then segued into cancer research. She currently is part of $7.6 million National Cancer Institute Research Project headed by Emory University designed to study how and why prostate cancer metastasizes (spreads) to bone. Dr. Farach-Carson is particularly interested in the genetic changes that take place as prostate cancer develops as well as what makes bone such an appealing habitat for cancer cells. A major goal is to be able to understand cancer progression so scientists and engineers can develop the tools doctors need to identify and treat men with rapidly progressive disease who are at greater risk for prostate cancer to become deadly. These findings also may shed some light on the progression of certain breast cancers, which, like prostate cancer, tend to spread to bone. Attacking big problems such as this require innovative teams of brilliant people who span a variety of disciplines. Being surrounded by these types of people is one of the reasons why Cindy chose to return to Houston and join Rice as AVPR.

Cindy, a native of Galveston, Texas, received a B.S. in biology magna cum laude from the University of South Carolina in 1978 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1982 from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she also was a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry. She also served as a postdoctoral fellow in physiological chemistry at Johns Hopkins University and in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She taught at Baylor College of Medicine for a year before joining the faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1988. She became an associate professor in the Department of Basic Sciences, Section of Biochemistry, at the UTHSC Dental Branch, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Urogenital Oncology at U.T.'s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and member of the UTHSC Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

Cindy left Houston in 1998 to join the faculty at the University of Delaware in Newark, where she was a professor of Biological Sciences and Materials Sciences from 1998-2009. She served as coordinator for the five-year renovation of research and teaching space in a campus building and also planned the building of a laboratory for the Center for Translational Cancer Research. She became the center's director in 2005. She served as a member of the University of Delaware Research Council and the state's Delaware Cancer Consortium. She is the author of over 120 publications and has served as a reviewer for many federal and private study section panels as well as many journals in her field. She is co-editor of a seven volume series, Topics in Bone Biology, and donates her proceeds to the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research to support young investigator travel to the annual meeting.

Cindy grew fond of Rice during the years she worked across the street at U.T., and she has been coming to the campus to teach part of the tissue-engineering course every summer since she left Houston. She is delighted to be back in Texas and excited about her new position as AVPR.