The Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara has added three new trustees with three-year terms beginning in April. They are Dr. W. Charles Conway, Steve McHugh and Denise Montell. The volunteer Cancer Foundation Board focuses exclusively on fulfilling the mission of ensuring excellent cancer care close to home for all residents of Santa Barbara County.
“This esteemed group of new trustees brings a breadth of experience and knowledge to our board. Their commitment to cancer care will continue to benefit local patients and families as the Cancer Foundation marks 73 years of service to our community,” said Lori Willis, executive director.
Conway is a pancreas, liver and esophageal cancer surgeon, who joined the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center in 2017 from Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. He completed his medical degree, internship and general surgery residency at Detroit’s Wayne State University. He received his fellowship training in Surgical Oncology at John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica. He lives in Santa Barbara.
McHugh holds the positions of president of Santa Barbara Infrared, Inc. (SBIR) and IRCameras, LLC. He is also the chairman of TXMission, Sensor Technology Engineering and Princeton IR Technologies. He was co-founder of SBIR in 1986 and started other technology companies over the years. He has been involved in the EO-IR industry for more than 35 years.
McHugh was earned a bacheor of science degree in engineering and economics from University of California, San Diego in 1979.
Montell, PhD earned her bacheor of science degree in biochemistry and cell biology at the University of California, San Diego and her Ph.D in neuroscience at Stanford University. As an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution, she developed a new model for studying cell motility in vivo using a powerful combination of cell biology and molecular genetic approaches.
In 1990 she attained an independent junior faculty position at the Carnegie and in 1992 became an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, rising to the rank of full professor in 2002. At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine she served as director of the Graduate Program in Biological Chemistry for 10 years and was the founding director of the Center for Cell Dynamics.
Montell joined the faculty of MCDB at UCSB in 2012. She has served on the advisory councils of the American Cancer Society, National Institutes of General Medical Sciences, American Society for Cell Biology, and Gordon Research Conferences. She served as the 2020 president of the Genetics Society of America and serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute.
She is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
To learn more, visit the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara at www.cfsb.org.