RTOG Group Chair, Dr. Walter J. Curran, Named Director of Emory Winship Cancer Institute
Walter J. Curran, Jr., M.D., RTOG Group Chair, has been named the Executive Director of the Emory Winship Cancer Institute and Associate Vice President for Cancer, Woodruff Health Sciences Center. Dr. Curran, who will continue as the RTOG Group Chair, will become the only radiation oncologist in the country to serve as the director of an NCI-designated cancer center.
“In the 20 months that Dr. Curran has been at Emory, he turned the cancer center a major accruer to RTOG clinical trials,” states Mitchell Machtay, M.D., RTOG Deputy Group Chair and professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Ireland Cancer Center of the University Hospitals Case Medical Center. “His leadership and commitment to cancer research will serve Emory well and continue to enhance RTOG’s research mission. As the only radiation oncologist director at an NCI-designated cancer center, this appointment speaks to Dr. Curran’s deep, career-long commitment not just to the specialty of radiation oncology but to advancing all of the missions of cancer research and education.”
Dr. Curran has been the group chair and principal investigator of the RTOG since 1997. Prior to that he served as the group’s deputy group chair and chair of its Brain Tumor Committee. Dr. Curran is a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar, and is the chair of Emory’s Department of Radiation Oncology and the medical director of the Emory Winship Cancer Institute. He joined Emory in November 2007 from Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where he served as professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and clinical director for the Kimmel Cancer Center.
Dr. Curran graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, received his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia, and is a Board Certified Radiation Oncologist. Dr. Curran completed his residency in the Department of Radiation Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and his internship in internal medicine at Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.
