Bull receives international honor

 

The Society for Thermal Medicine has named Dr. Joan Bull the recipient of the 2008 J. Eugene Robinson Award.

Bull, director of the Division of Oncology, received the 19th annual international award April 10 in Munich, Germany, at the 10th International Congress on Hyperthermic Oncology, and presented a lecture, “Whole Body Thermal Therapy and Chemotherapy: Lessons Learned and Future Directions,” as part of the award.
The award is granted annually to an investigator who has made outstanding contributions to hyperthermic oncology. It is named for the pioneer of hyperthermic research, J. Eugene Robinson, who first used hyperthermia as an anti-cancer agent in the 1960s.

“It is a very meaningful honor for me, and I am very, very happy to receive it, particularly because it was the very first time the Society for Thermal Medicine has made the award in my research area of whole-body thermal therapy combined with chemotherapy (thermochemotherapy),” Bull said. “The award therefore honors a number of investigators from whose work our own investigations have evolved.”

Bull received her medical degree from Stanford University and completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Stanford and also at the National Cancer Institute, NIH before she joined the Medical School’s faculty in 1980. She has been a member of the Society of Thermal Medicine for more than 20 years and has been actively investigating both clinical and preclinical thermochemotherapy during that time, in addition to general oncology teaching and clinical care.

Founded in 1986, the mission of the Society for Thermal Medicine is to “facilitate interaction and communication between theoreticians, experimentalists, and clinical practitioners from the disciplines of biological, chemical, physical engineering, and clinical sciences leading to contributions to the understanding and use of hyperthermia.”

-D. Brown