Speaker Detail

Anna Barker is director of Transformative Healthcare Networks at Arizona State University, which fosters new research models to better prevent and treat disease. Until 2010, she was deputy director of the National Cancer Institute and deputy director of the institute's Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives. At NCI she developed and implemented multidisciplinary programs in cancer research, including the Nanotechnology Alliance for Cancer, the Cancer Genome Atlas, the Clinical Proteomics Technologies Initiative for Cancer and a network of physical sciences-oncology centers. She also led the development of resources to enable personalized cancer medicine in bioinformatics through the Cancer Human Biobank; was founding co-chair of the NCI-FDA Interagency Oncology Task Force; and oversaw NCI's international cancer programs. Barker served as a senior scientist and later a senior executive at Battelle Memorial Institute, as well as CEO of a public biotechnology drug development firm she founded before joining the NCI. Barker holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State University.