Leadership

Thomas Kurtz, MBA

President / CEO t.kurtz@wriwindber.org 814-361-6988

Tom Kurtz is the current President and CEO of the CSS Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber. Mr. Kurtz earned a MBA in Medical Practice Management and is one of approximately 600 people in the country with this degree. He is also a certified member in the American College of Medical Practice Executives (ACMPE).  In addition to his current position at CSSIMMW, Mr. Kurtz is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Red Cross Keystone Chapter and is also a member of numerous other boards such as JARI, Pitt-Johnstown Alumni Association and the Johnstown YMCA.

Mr. Kurtz’s previously held Vice President level positions at Carlisle Hospital, Lee Hospital and Memorial Medical Center and also served as the Director of Practice Management at UPMC. Prior to accepting the position at CSSIMMW he served as a consultant for places such as Tyrone Hospital, Windber Medical Center and Washington and Jefferson College. In addition, Mr. Kurtz has developed and taught classes in Healthcare Sociology at Penn Highlands Community College and Mount Aloysius College.

Hai Hu, PhD

CSO h.hu@wriwindber.org 814-361-6903

Dr. Hu is the Chief Scientific Officer of Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber overseeing all scientific activities including bioinformatics, informatics infrastructure, biobanking, and molecular research. He obtained his PhD in Biophysics from SUNY Buffalo and completed a post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His current research focuses on breast cancer and pan-cancers through integrated analysis of clinicopathologic and proteogenomic data produced internally or with collaborators, and accessed from the public databases. Dr. Hu has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers including those in Cell and Nature. He also has published five book chapters and co-edited two books. He has presented at many national and international scientific and business conferences, delivering keynote speeches and serving as bioinformatics program or session chair in several of them. Dr. Hu serves on the Council of the John P. Murtha Cancer Center, and the Scientific Committee of the Center for Prostate Disease Research of the Uniformed Services University. He is a project/working group/task force leader of several major cancer research consortiums including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network, the TCGA PanCanAtlas Network, and the Applied Proteogenomics OrganizationaL Learning and Outcomes (APOLLO). He was one of the TCGA recipients of the 2020 Team Science Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, and was the recipient of the 2021 James J. Leonard Award for Excellence in Clinical/Translational Research.

Stella Somiari, PhD

Senior Director Biobank s.somiari@wriwindber.org 814-361-6917

Dr. Stella Somiari is Senior Director and leader of the CAP accredited biobank. She is a pioneer staff member of the research institute where she conducts cancer and biospecimen research using genomics and proteomics technologies.  In 2000, she led the conceptualization, design and development of the management tools and standard operating procedures for establishment of the breast tissue repository of the Department of Defense (DoD) funded Clinical Breast Care Project (CBCP) of MCCRP USUHS. In 2002, Dr. Somiari developed a second protocol to expand the biobank’s collection to include a wider variety of human biological specimens from hospitals, and the organ recovery organization, Center for Organ Recovery and Education (CORE).  Under the leadership of Dr. Somiari, the biobank contributed breast tissue for the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) and in 2012, based on the biobank’s outstanding quality of work for the CBCP, the DoD expanded the task of the biobank to include long term storage for the military’s research biospecimens. This operation which is now with the Murtha Cancer Center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC), Bethesda, MD has been expanded from the single collection at WRNMMC to include more than 7 Military Treatment Facilities (MTF) across the United States. Dr Somiari is an active member of the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER), where she has served on numerous committees, including ISBER’s scientific and publication committees. As an active member of the ISBER Biospecimen Science Working Group, she has contributed to peer reviewed publications of this group, which include 4 editions of the ISBER Best Practices Guidelines. She also was Associate Editor of the 2nd and 3rd Editions of the ISBER Best Practices Guidelines. To standardize and improve the work of the biobank, Dr. Somiari has incorporated into the biobank’s activities, biospecimen science research with the goal of generating evidence-based data that will support the identification of biomarkers for specimen quality control, and the development of non-destructive methods for tissue quality assessment. Dr Somiari has published widely in many subject areas including, breast cancer, autoantibodies, genomics, proteomics and biospecimen quality assessment.

Leonid Kvecher, MS

Director of Biomedical Informatics Infrastructure l.kvecher@wriwindber.org 814-361-6934

Mr. Kvecher is the Director of the Biomedical Informatics Infrastructure at CSS Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber (CSSIMMW). He joined the institute in 2004 as a Biomedical Informatics Specialist. In the beginning of his career at CSSIMMW he was focused on building the Data Warehouse for Translational Research (DW4TR) where patients’ clinicopathological data are integrated with sample information and experimental results for further analysis. As part of the group, he was responsible for the quality of the data and provided data to the scientists for further analysis. Based on the data, multiple discoveries have been achieved and published. During his career at CSSIMMW, he was involved in developing additional functionalities to DW4TR to handle temporal information, experimental results, and additional types of cancer. He also led the development of the Data Repository system for Translational Research – the custom informatics system for collecting clinicopathological, sample, and experimental results data for 2500 participants against 250 biomarkers. Based on the organization’s needs, he was assigned to lead development of the data tracking system for the Clinical Breast Care Project (DTS-CBCP). Building on the success of DTS-CBCP, he was tasked to build a data tracking system for the John P. Murtha Cancer Center biobank (DTS-MCC).  With the recent involvement of our institute in the APOLLO project, his group was chosen to spear-head the APOLLO Informatics Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) which will include the development of data tracking and data repository systems for the project (DTS-APOLLO and DW4TR-APOLLO).

Xiaoying Lin, PhD

Director of Bioinformatics x.lin@wriwindber.org 814-361-6947

Dr. Lin is the Director of Bioinformatics at CSS Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber (CSSIMMW). He joined the institute in April 2021. After earning a PhD in molecular biology, Dr. Lin started his career in genomics and bioinformatics at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI) as a postdoc, and was later promoted to a faculty member. He played a leading role in the Arabidopsis Genome Analysis Project, the first plant genome ever completely sequenced. He also contributed to five of the first seven eukaryotic model organisms. He then moved to the biotech industry for the next 20 years working for Celera Genomics, Applied Biosystems, Life Technologies, ThermoFisher Scientific and Illumina, where he built and led various teams in different function areas. His roles spanned product development and commercialization, collaboration, technical support, solution consultation, and professional services. He has a wide knowledge of genomic platforms and bioinformatic approaches for different applications in research and diagnostic fields. At CSSIMMW he directs the bioinformatic team, which leads and contributes to cancer translational research projects in the areas of experiment design, clinical data analysis, genomic/proteomic data analysis, and integrated analysis and interpretation. As part of the institute leadership team, Dr. Lin is also involved with project management, infrastructure building, external collaboration and growth opportunity evaluation.

Lori Sturtz, PhD

Director, Molecular Lab l.sturtz@wriwindber.org 814-361-6953

Dr. Lori Sturtz received her B.S. in Biology from Elizabethtown College and her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences (Toxicological Sciences) from Johns Hopkins University. She began her tenure at Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber in 2003 as a post-doctoral fellow, later becoming a staff scientist, and currently serving as the Director of the Molecular Lab. Dr. Sturtz has developed and optimized multiple protocols for the isolation of high-quality DNA, RNA, and protein from both frozen and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue specimens, including protocols specific for laser microdissected (LMD) samples, for use in genotyping, gene expression, whole-genome sequencing (WGS), total RNA-Seq and mass spectrometry studies, as well as isolation of miRNA from plasma and serum samples for miRNA expression/sequencing analyses. As part of the APOLLO research network, Dr. Sturtz leads the Molecular Quality Control program for the APOLLO 5 pan-cancer study as well as the APOLLO 4 breast cancer studies focused on proteogenomic differences in breast tissues from African American and Caucasian women. Her other research interests include the role of the tumor microenvironment in breast tumor progression, molecular markers of therapeutic response and disease outcomes, metabolic and lipid biomarkers of breast cancer in different subpopulations, and genetic factors affecting response to environmental exposures and subsequent cancer development.