Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Roland Dunbrack Appointed Co-Leader of the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment Program

Roland Dunbrack, PhD, professor in the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment Research Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has been appointed co-leader of the program alongside its current leader, Edna (Eti) Cukierman, PhD.

PHILADELPHIA (January 13, 2025) - Roland Dunbrack, PhD, professor in the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment Research Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has been appointed co-leader of the program alongside its current leader, Edna (Eti) Cukierman, PhD.

In his new role, Dunbrack will work to facilitate collaborations between basic scientists and clinical researchers, leading this key Fox Chase program in new directions to propel the institution forward in innovative ways.

Dunbrack also serves as director of the Molecular Modeling Facility at Fox Chase, which he founded in 2003, and serves as director of the Organic Synthesis Facility, also since 2003. In addition, he serves as an adjunct professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, adjunct associate professor of Biochemistry at Drexel University College of Medicine, and adjunct professor of Biochemistry at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

Dunbrack joined Fox Chase in October 1997 as an assistant professor, becoming associate professor with tenure in 2003, and promoted to professor in 2011. His research focuses on statistical structural bioinformatics, the development of methods for structure prediction of proteins and protein complexes, and the application of these methods to problems in cancer biology.

In addition to his research at Fox Chase, he serves on various institutional committees including the Fox Chase IT Research Advisory Committee, the Fox Chase Tenure and Promotions Committee, and the Temple University Health System AI Committee. He has been honored with the Senior Research Excellence Award and the LGBTQ+ Pride Month Health Equity Leadership and Social Justice Award, both from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, as well as Fox Chase's Special Contributor Award.

Dunbrack earned his AB degree in chemistry (Summa cum laude) from Harvard College in 1985. After two years at Cambridge University on a Herchel Smith Harvard Scholarship, he obtained his doctoral degree in biophysics from Harvard University in 1993. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco before accepting his first faculty position at Fox Chase.

He has published 150 papers in such journals as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Nature Communications, PLOS Computational Biology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Nucleic Acids Research, Nature Cell Biology, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and Cancer Research Communications among others. He holds an NIH Maximizing Investigator's Research Award (MIRA) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. He has several patents to his credit, serves as associate editor of PLOS Computational Biology, has served on more than 40 NIH study section panels, and has been a member of the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB) Scientific Advisory Committee since 2009.