Robert Winn, MD
Robert Winn, MD, has been named Director of Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center (VCU). An expert in lung cancer and community-based health care, Dr. Winn will start at VCU in December.
Dr. Winn comes to VCU from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he has served as Director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center and as Associate Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs for Community-Based Practice at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Science System. At the University of Illinois, Dr. Winn built a community-to-bench integrated health model that brings together both the discovery and implementation sciences into one health delivery and research system. He also oversaw the research and clinical activities of 13 federally qualified health centers.
“Dr. Winn is a passionate leader with vision, compassion, and a commitment to service,” said Marsha D. Rappley, MD, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences at VCU and Chief Executive Officer of VCU Health System. “His depth of experience and talent as a leader, physician, researcher, and mentor will enable him to build upon Massey Cancer Center’s long-time and far-reaching success.”
“Massey’s mission to relieve suffering and death from cancer is perfectly aligned with my own values and priorities,” Dr. Winn said. “I am incredibly impressed with the cancer center’s research, clinical and educational programs, as well as the collaboration that Massey fosters across VCU, VCU Health, and beyond to discover, develop, deliver, and teach effective means to prevent, detect, treat, and cure cancer.”
Research and Training
An accomplished physician-scientist, Dr. Winn is a pulmonologist whose scholarship has focused on lung cancer, health disparities, and community-based health care. His basic science research, which has been supported by multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Veterans Affairs Merit awards, focuses on the mechanisms that drive the proliferation of cancer and on the role of cellular senescence in lung cancer. He is a Principal Investigator on several community-based projects funded by the NIH and National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Winn is committed to developing methods to eliminate health disparities and has received national and international acclaim for his efforts to empower underserved patient populations, improve health-care delivery, and ensure equal access to cutting-edge medical treatments. ■
