The Hanna Wise Professorship of Cancer Research

Allen Wise

The Hanna Wise Professorship was established in 2013 by Allen Wise, his sons Marc and Brian, and their wives Laurel and Nastaran to honor the life of Hanna Wise, a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother.

Hanna Wise was a member of the Abramson Cancer Center Director’s Leadership Council, and the gift to endow the Professorship also was made to support John H. Glick, MD, who directed the Abramson Cancer Center for 20 years and whom the family regards as a model for the way medicine should be practiced.

Allen Wise is a health insurance industry executive who served as CEO of Coventry Health Care Inc. He and his family hope that their support of cancer research will help lead to improved outcomes for patients and families around the world.

 

Ben Z. StangerCurrent Chairholder
Ben Z. Stanger, MD, PhD

Ben Z. Stanger, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, an Associate Investigator at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, and Director of the Penn Pancreatic Cancer Research Center (PCRC).

Dr. Stanger’s research program bridges the fields of developmental biology, cancer biology, and regenerative medicine. Focusing on the pancreas and the liver, his laboratory is committed to understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie cancer metastasis. Dr. Stanger’s honors include being named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences in 2009, his election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2011, receiving the Michael S. Brown New Investigator Award in 2013, and receiving the American Cancer Society (Philadelphia) Scientific Research Award in 2016.

Dr. Stanger earned his SB in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 and a combined MD/PhD in 1997 from Harvard Medical School. He then went on to complete a residency in Internal Medicine at UCSF and a fellowship in Gastroenterology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was an Instructor at Harvard Medical School from 2003-2006 until his move to Penn.

Previous Chairholders

  • Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil 2014–2017