Robert Winn was named director of Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center. The lung cancer and community-based health care expert will begin his role at VCU Dec. 2.
Winn comes to VCU from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he has served as director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center and as associate vice chancellor of health affairs for community-based practice at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Science System. At UIC, Winn built a community-to-bench integrated health model that brings together both the discovery and implementation sciences into one health delivery and research system, and he oversaw the research and clinical activities of 13 Federally Qualified Health Centers.
Prior to joining UIC, Winn spent 13 years at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and School of Medicine in leadership roles and clinical faculty appointments, including associate dean of admissions, vice chair of career development/diversity inclusion and senior medical director of the pulmonary nodule clinic.
“I am incredibly impressed with the cancer center’s research, clinical and educational programs as well as the collaboration that Massey fosters across VCU, VCU Health and beyond to discover, develop, deliver and teach effective means to prevent, detect, treat and cure cancer,” Winn said in a statement. “Also, Massey’s commitment to ensuring equal access to cancer care is deeply important to me.”
Winn is a pulmonologist whose scholarship has focused on lung cancer, health disparities and community-based health care. His basic science research, which was supported by NIH and Veterans Affairs Merit awards, focuses on the mechanisms that drive the proliferation of cancer and on the role of cellular senescence in lung cancer. He is a principal investigator on several community-based projects funded by the NIH and NCI, including the All of Us Research Program, a NIH precision medicine initiative. His research aims to develop methods to eliminate health disparities.
Winn replaces Gordon Ginder, who has served as Massey’s director for 22 years and announced his desire to step down last summer.
