New Med Dean

Andrews: a first for Duke

Andrews: a first for Duke. Courtesy of DukeMed News

Nancy C. Andrews, an internationally renowned researcher and dean of Basic Sciences and Graduate Studies at Harvard Medical School, became the dean of Duke's medical school on October 1. Andrews, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist by training, is the school's first female dean and the only woman to lead one of the nation's top-ten medical schools.

At Harvard, Andrews oversaw research in the medical school's preclinical sciences departments, as well as physician-scientist and graduate education. She was previously the director of the Harvard-MIT M.D./Ph.D. Program and also served as an associate in medicine at Children's Hospital in Boston and a distinguished physician in pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year.

A native of Syracuse, New York, Andrews received her bachelor's and master's degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University. She received a Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and, two years later, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She joined the Harvard faculty in 1991 as an instructor in pediatrics and rose through the academic ranks, being named to an endowed chair as full professor in 2003. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1993 to 2006.

At Duke, Andrews succeeds R. Sanders Williams M.D. '74, who was recently promoted to the position of senior vice chancellor for academic affairs after having served as dean of the medical school since 2001.

"I am deeply appreciative and humbled by the opportunity to lead one of the premier medical schools in the United States," Andrews says. "Duke has a great tradition, but it's also a very forward-looking and outward-looking institution."

 

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