Fraass earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, as well as a Master's degree and Doctorate in physics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also completed a fellowship in radiation oncology at the National Institutes of Health prior to joining the Michigan faculty.

Christopher G. Willett, MD, FASTRO, has improved the lives of many patients with gastrointestinal and other cancers through a career that has brought achievements in a number of interwoven areas. As one of Dr. Willett's nominating letters explained, he is "a compassionate radiation oncologist fully committed to providing the very best possible care to patients, an innovative translational researcher who has made seminal contributions to the field, and a committed teacher, mentor and leader, whose tireless service has enriched the field of radiation oncology."


Willett is the current Chair and professor of radiation oncology for the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He has served as director for clinical research and numerous other leadership roles with the Duke Cancer Institute. Under his leadership at Duke, the department's clinical and physics faculty has doubled; he has developed a comprehensive division of medical physics, including a graduate program; and the clinical services have expanded to seven facilities in North Carolina and Virginia. Willett also established a department-supported clinical trial recruitment program that accrues 150 to 180 patients each year to investigator- initiated trials.

Before his move to North Carolina, Willett rose from assistant to full professor of radiation oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston in just over a decade. While at Harvard, Willett also served as director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center and clinical director of radiation oncology at MGH and began his extensive involvement with the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG). In a span of nearly 30 years he has served as Chair of the RTOG Gastrointestinal Cancer Committee and investigator for a number of trials in gastrointestinal malignancy. Willett's contributions to clinical and translational research are many, whether pioneering intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) to treat rectal and pancreatic cancers or demonstrating the potential of RT combined with anti-angiogenic therapy to fight a range of cancer types. For example, in 2004 he published a Nature Medicine article that has been cited more than 1,800 times, reporting an innovative trial combining preoperative RT and fluorouracil together with the anti-angiogenic antibody bevacizumab.

Association Viewpoints Homepage