Franziska Michor wins 2015 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise

Franziska Michor, associate professor of computational biology, has won a 2015 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. Michor was chosen for her research that fuses evolutionary biology, mathematics, and clinical research toward a better understanding of cancer genesis and treatments.

Michor, who is also a professor of computational biology in the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, leads a National Cancer Institute-sponsored Physical Science-Oncology Center aimed at using physical sciences to address intractable challenges in cancer biology. Using a quantitative approach, Michor has shed light on the cellular basis of drug resistance in cancer patients using the drug Gleevec. She has also designed novel cancer drug treatment regimens that are currently being tested in clinical trials involving non-small-cell lung cancer and a brain tumor called pro-neural glioblastoma.

The Vilcek Foundation, established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia, honors the contributions of foreign-born scholars and artists living in the U.S. Michor was born in Vienna, Austria.

Watch a video from the Vilcek Foundation about Franziska Michor

Read a press release from the Vilcek Foundation