Dr. Bhalla resigned as director but will still be at the center running his lab, said School of Medicine Dean D. Douglas Miller. Dr. John Catravas, director of the Vascular Biology Center and senior associate dean of administration in the School of Medicine, will be the acting director, Dr. Miller said.
Dr. Bhalla was named in April 2006 to be the cancer center director while he was scientific director of the Hematologic Malignancy Program at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla.
He was heavily involved in the design of a new $31 million Cancer Center, which is slated to open in January. He is a member of a key developmental therapeutics study section for the National Institutes of Health and a well-recognized researcher in new therapies that target genetic components of cancer cells.
“His administrative duties have been reassigned, at his choice,” Dr. Miller said.
