NEWS
2011 - 02 - 16 New Head of the Oncology Department
The Oncology Department of CRP-Santé is very pleased to announce that Prof. R. Bjerkvig has been appointed as Head of the Department as of January 2011. The Oncology Department is currently composed of two units: the Norlux Neuro-Oncology Laboratory headed by Dr. Simone Niclou, and the Laboratory of Experimental Hemato-Oncology of Dr. Guy Berchem. As head of the department, Prof. Bjerkvig will foster the interactions between the two laboratories and strive towards increasing international recognition and visibility of the department as a whole.
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Prof. Rolf Bjerkvig, Ph.D
Dr. Bjerkvig is Professor in Cell Biology at the University of Bergen, Norway and is co-directing the NorLux Neuro-Oncology laboratories located in Luxembourg and Norway (www.norlux.lu ). Prof. Bjerkvig has acted as a vice chairman, and chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology as well as chairman of the Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen, Norway. He has also acted as co-director of the National Gene Therapy Programme in Norway. He has successfully coordinated the Integrated project Angiotargeting within the 6th framework programme of the European Commission involving 13 European Research Institutions (www.uib.no/med/angiotargeting).
Prof. Bjerkvig has served in numerous national and international committees related to cancer research, which includes evaluation committees for the Norwegian Research Council, the Norwegian Cancer Society, the Swedish Research Council, Swedish and Finnish centers of excellence, the Luxembourg Foresight programme, as well as the European Commission (5th and 6th Framework Programme).
Prof. Bjerkvig received his basic academic training at the Brain Tumor Research Center, University of California San Francisco. He has worked as a research scientist at the Norwegian Cancer Society affiliated to the Gade Institute, Department of Pathology, at Haukeland Hospital, Bergen. His main interests are to elucidate the mechanisms that cause tumor cell migration within the CNS. In later years his research has focused on mechanisms of cancer initiation and progression with particular emphasis on cancer initiating cells. His research is also focused on mechanisms of tumor angioegenesis and therapeutic approaches that will prevent angiogenesis in brain tumors.
He receives major grants from the Norwegian Research Council, The Norwegian Cancer Society, The National Gene Therapy Programme and the European Commission. He is on the editorial board of several international journals and is sitting in several national as well as international funding committees for cancer in Europe. He has published more than 150 articles in the scientific literature.
He has received a number of research prizes for his work.