BME Seminar: “Cancer Prevention and Symptom Science: Developing and Translating Technologies”

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Erin Lavik, Sc.D.
Chief Technology Officer & Deputy Director, Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute

Bio: Erin Lavik, Sc.D., is the Deputy Director and Chief Technology Officer of the Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Materials Science and Engineering. Before joining DCP, Dr. Lavik was a Professor of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development in the College of Engineering and Information Technology. At UMBC she ran a lab focusing on engineer polymers to protect and repair the nervous system and to treat trauma with a focus on producing safe, effective, and accessible treatments. Prior to this, she was a professor at Case Western and a principal investigator in the Functional Electrical Stimulation Center in Cleveland focusing on translating technologies to help patients with spinal cord and brain injuries.

Dr. Lavik won the TR100 award in 2003 and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2010. She became a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers in 2014, a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2019, and from 2022-2023 was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Policy Fellow at the Office of Advanced Manufacturing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Abstract: Erin Lavik, Sc.D., became the second Deputy Director and first Chief Technology Officer of the Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP) in August 2023. In this capacity, she provides leadership in how best to apply promising emerging technologies to the prevention and control of cancer and its consequences. She has a passion for building research environments that facilitate cross-discipline collaboration for the purpose of tackling problems at the intersection of new technologies and science. This talk with cover Dr. Lavik’s path to the Division of Cancer Prevention and ways engineers can participate in cancer prevention and symptom science programs.