Retirement

In 1953, a teenaged Alan Rein read about what James Watson and Francis Crick famously called “the secret of life”—the double-helix structure of DNA, which had just been published in Nature. Captivated, Rein decided at that moment that he wanted to be a biochemist. Rein’s biochemistry aspirations shifted to virology during college, leading him to a 60-year career in the field, the last 45 years of which were spent at NCI Frederick, studying how retroviruses like murine leukemia virus and HIV assemble themselves and infect host cells while somehow evading the immune response.

After 32 years with the National Cancer Institute, Tom Stackhouse, Ph.D., is riding into the sunset. The director of the Technology Transfer Center retires at the end of June. He’s gratified to have had a fulfilling career that helped enable so many partnerships, programs, and products. The team has had several successes, including some in support of the science in Frederick.

In 1972, soon after then-President Richard Nixon’s newly established Frederick Cancer Research Center hired its first employees, 24-year-old Kunio Nagashima put on a suit and tie and boarded a Boeing 747 at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. An electron microscopist from Kyoto University, Nagashima had a one-way ticket in his hand, bound for the United States and ready to take a new job—sight unseen.

On December 2, Craig Reynolds, Ph.D., director, Office of Scientific Operations, and NCI associate director for Frederick, will put the finishing touches on a 37-year career with the National Cancer Institute.

Jeffrey Strathern, Ph.D., has hung up his lab coat and donned a sailor’s cap after 32 years of advancing science in areas such as genetics and genomics, chromosome biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry.

After 34 years at NCI, Robert Wiltrout, Ph.D., said he is looking forward to trading his I-270 commute for another type of commute: exploring the waterways of Maryland, Alaska, and Wyoming to fulfill his love of fishing.

Wiltrout officially retired as director of the NCI Center for Cancer Research (CCR) on July 2 of last year.

Throughout his college academic career, Wiltrout had an interest in science, but it was not until he was working on a research project for his master’s degree that he considered a career in scientific research.

By Ashley DeVine, Staff Writer

Although Nancy Colburn, Ph.D., retired in January after 36 years at NCI, she won’t be disappearing from the NCI campus at Frederick anytime soon; she’s been appointed scientist emeritus in the Laboratory of Cancer Prevention (LCP), Center for Cancer Research (CCR).

Beginning of a Career in Molecular Biology