School of Medicine's Thor in leadership roles for three prominent groups

Thor

Ann Thor, who focuses on hormone-related malignancies as the chair of the department of pathology at the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver, has been elected chair of the American Association for Cancer Research's (AACR) Women in Cancer Research council. Thor has served on the committee for two years.

The council is a program for the more than 12,000 female AACR members; it offers at least three annual symposia, educational events and nominations of women for science awards. It also offers mentoring programs for junior and senior scientists.

"About half of the post-docs in cancer research are women, but between the ages of 30 and 40 almost half of them leave the field," Thor said. "We try to encourage them that you can have families and do science, and there are lots of different career paths."

During her one-year term, Thor wants to reach beyond women to work with AACR's council on minorities.

"I'd like us to partner in joint educational programs, to facilitate the careers and science of both women and minorities. They face different, and perhaps more difficult challenges," Thor said.

Thor also was recently asked to chair the University of California San Francisco's Breast SPORE Advisory Board, and is president-elect of the International Society of Breast Pathology, which enhances the education of breast pathologists worldwide.