The Hilarie L. Morgan and Michell L. Morgan President’s Distinguished Professorship in Women’s Health

This Professorship was created in 2018 through the generosity of Hilarie L. Morgan and Mitchell L. Morgan, longstanding friends of Penn Medicine. The Morgan Professorship seeks to advance women’s health in perpetuity. By supporting the career development of promising junior physician investigators, the Chair seeks to improve health outcomes for women and babies today and for generations to come. 

Hilarie Lauter Morgan GR85 is a former psychologist who earned a PhD from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. Dr. Morgan has been a member of the Penn Women’s Health Leadership Council since October 2008. Mitchell is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Morgan Properties, the 3rd largest Multifamily owner in the country. Mr. Morgan was a member of the Penn Medicine Board from June 2007 to March 2014.  

President’s Distinguished Professorships are awarded to eminent faculty members with research and teaching expertise in areas identified as high priorities by Penn’s President. The creation of President’s Distinguished Professorships at the Perelman School of Medicine has been supported by the challenge gift of Penn University Trustees and Penn Medicine Board members George A. Weiss and Richard W. Vague.

Current Chairholder: Fiona Simpkins, MD

Fiona Simpkins, MD, is the Hilarie L. Morgan and Mitchell L. Morgan President’s Distinguished Professor in Women’s Health, Director of Clinical & Translational Gynecologic Oncology Research at Penn Medicine, Director of Preclinical Drug Development for the Ovarian Cancer Research Center.

After completing her medical degree at Temple University School of Medicine, Dr. Simpkins went on to complete an OB-GYN residency at Johns Hopkins University, and then a Gynecology Oncology Surgical fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Dr. Simpkins completed additional training with a Cancer Research Training fellowship in basic science focusing on ovarian cancer signal transduction at the National Cancer Institute, as well as a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Miami studying ant-estrogen resistance in ovarian cancer.

Dr. Simpkins is a member on the Phase I/Developmental Therapeutics Committee for Gynecological Cancers for the NRG Cooperative Group – contributing to the national conversation about early phase research and the importance of sharing knowledge amongst the scientific community.

The Simpkins lab is focused on identifying novel targets and strategies to overcome drug resistance in ovarian cancer and bringing these new findings to the clinic. The laboratory has four areas of focus: (i) optimizing synthetic lethal approaches by exploiting genetic vulnerabilities in gynecological cancers with an emphasis on ovarian cancer, (ii) investigating biomarkers of response and resistance to targeted therapies by clinical trial tumor and blood studies (iii) investigating strategies to target “cancer-stem cells” in ovarian cancer, (iv) “humanizing” PDX models to evaluate the effects of targeted DNA damage agents on the human immune system.

Dr. Simpkins is also a principal investigator for early phase ovarian cancer clinical trials evaluating novel therapies emanating from her laboratory. In addition to her research, Dr. Simpkins is board certified in OB-GYN and Gynecology Oncology, providing surgical expertise for patients with gynecologic cancers.