Who We Are – Affiliate Faculty

Dr. Ross Berbeco received undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his PhD in High Energy Physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined the faculty of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Berbeco is currently the Mass General Brigham Radiation Oncology Vice Chair for Physics and Chief of the Division of Physics, and Professor of Radiation Oncology at HMS. He has both wet and dry labs with projects spanning computation, biophysics, device development, clinical imaging, and preclinical radiotherapy research. These projects have been funded by federal and industry grants and led to numerous publications and patents. Foremost, Dr. Berbeco is inspired by innovations and ideas that improve human health.

Galit Lahav received her PhD in 2001 from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. In 2003, she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. She then spent a year at Harvard’s Center for Genomics Research, and in 2004 joined the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. In 2018 Lahav became the Chair of the Department of Systems Biology.
 
Lahav pioneered live, single-cell imaging to reveal how mammalian cells process signals and make fate decisions via the tumor suppressor p53. Her lab discovered that cells interpret DNA damage through complex temporal p53 dynamics, such as oscillations, which shape transcriptional and cell cycle responses, influencing choices between growth, death, and senescence. Her research showed that cell-to-cell variations in p53 dynamics critically affect their responses to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and that manipulating p53 dynamics can alter cellular outcomes. Her lab applied similar live imaging strategies to unravel the temporal dynamics of other key pathways including those regulating cell size, DNA repair, differentiation and the cell cycle.
 
Lahav has been recognized through several awards and honors including the Smith Family Award, Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring awards. Lahav have established and organized leadership and management workshops for postdocs and faculty, as well as developed programs for advancing women…

Jessalyn Ubellacker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Metabolism at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she runs a translational research laboratory focused on understanding influences of metabolic microenvironments on cancer progression. Jessalyn completed her Ph.D. in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard Medical School and M.D. at Stanford School of Medicine. During her postdoctoral training with Dr. Sean J. Morrison (UT Southwestern Medical Center), she discovered that cancer cell survival in the bloodstream is limited by lipid oxidative stress that induces cancer death by ferroptosis, while the lymph node microenvironment is protective against ferroptotic cell death. Jessalyn’s laboratory has developed metabolic and redox profiling tools that can be collaboratively applied across diverse contexts, including radiation exposure, to investigate questions such as how radiation may alter the lymphatic metabolic microenvironment to influence immune cell function.

Marc G. Weisskopf, Ph.D., Sc.D., is the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology and Director of the Harvard TH Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health.  Dr. Weisskopf received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, and Sc.D. in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His work focuses on the influence of environmental exposures on brain health across the life course—including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cognitive function and dementia, and psychiatric conditions—and he explores epidemiological methods issues to improve causal inference from observational environmental health studies.  He is the Principal Investigator of the St. Louis Baby Tooth—Later Life Health Study that examines early life exposures—including to radiation related to early atomic bomb-related activity—and later life health.