Cancer researcher Andrew Ewald, Ph.D., has been appointed director of the Department of Cell Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He will take over the position from Peter Devreotes, Ph.D., who will remain on the faculty at Johns Hopkins. Ewald joined the medical school faculty in 2008 as an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology. His research focuses on how basic cellular processes, such as cell-to-cell connections and migration, contribute to cancer progression. He is known for his discoveries of the mechanisms by which breast cancer cells leave the primary tumor and spread through the body during metastasis.
Ewald received his undergraduate degree in physics with honors from Haverford College, and earned his doctorate in biochemistry and molecular physics from the California Institute of Technology. He completed postdoctoral work with Zena Werb in epithelial biology and breast cancer at the University of California, San Francisco.
A member of the American Association for Cancer Research, Society for Developmental Biology and the American Society for Cell Biology, Ewald has chaired conferences on cell and cancer biology, given invited lectures across the U.S. and abroad, served as editor of the Journal of Cell Science and worked closely with metastatic breast cancer patient advocacy organizations.
Within Johns Hopkins Medicine, Ewald is co-director of the Cancer Invasion and Metastasis Research Program in the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, as well as the Johns Hopkins-Allegheny Health Network Cancer Research Fund, a program that provides funding for basic, translational and clinical cancer research. He has secondary faculty appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Oncology.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Johns Hopkins University Provost’s Catalyst and Discovery awards, the American Association of Anatomists Morphological Sciences Award, the American Cancer Society’s Research Scholar Award and the METAvivor Founders’ Award.
Ewald has also been an active mentor to a wide range of graduate students and fellows. He chairs the Johns Hopkins Committee on Outside Interests and serves on the admissions committees of the Johns Hopkins Medical Scientist Training Program and the Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology Ph.D. Program.
His goals for the department include hiring junior faculty across the full range of cell biology, renovating departmental space, acquiring cutting edge instrumentation, introducing new career development programs, and building a diverse and inclusive community of scientists.
