Fairfax, Va., August 25, 2015 - ASTRO | The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has selected seven leading physician-researchers to receive a total of $675,000 in awards and grants to advance radiation oncology research. Together, the seven funding grants, including ASTRO Junior Faculty Career Research Training Award, the ASTRO Residents/Fellows in Radiation Oncology Research Seed Award and the ASTRO/Radiation Oncology Institute (ROI) Comparative Effectiveness Research Award, will support studies in radiation and cancer biology, radiation physics, translational research, outcomes/health services research and comparative effectiveness research within radiation oncology. Recipients will be recognized at ASTRO’s 57th Annual Meeting, October 18-21, 2015, at the Henry B. González Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.

“ASTRO proudly supports these seven exceptional researchers in their efforts to help us continue to advance radiation oncology care,” said ASTRO Chair Bruce G. Haffty, MD, FASTRO. “ASTRO is committed to engaging and funding recent medical graduates in their critical research efforts that will strengthen their radiation oncology careers and the specialty as a whole.”

All awardees must submit a report to ASTRO at the midterm and the conclusion of their research, and they are strongly encouraged to submit their study as an abstract in a subsequent ASTRO Annual Meeting. The grant winners are selected by ASTRO’s Research Grants Evaluation Committee within the Science Council and approved by the ASTRO Board of Directors.

The ASTRO Junior Faculty Career Research Training Award provides $100,000 annually for two years to two winners ($200,000 to each recipient) to support the careers of promising junior faculty by offering them the opportunity for dedicated time to work on research projects in radiation oncology, biology, physics or outcomes/health services. Recipients are board-eligible physicians, physicists in radiation oncology or radiobiologists within the first three years of their junior faculty appointment.

The two 2015 ASTRO Junior Faculty Career Research Training Award recipients are:

Kent William Mouw, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Dr. Mouw will be investigating the genomic determinants of chemoradiotherapy responses in anal carcinoma. His focus is to map the genetic landscape of a large number of anal tumors to understand their biology, which could help identify appropriate therapeutic targets.

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