Leadership at HiTS

Peter Sorger, PhD is the Otto Krayer Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Head of HiTS and Director of its Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology. Dr. Sorger’s research focuses on the systems biology of signal transduction networks controlling cell proliferation and death, the dysregulation of these networks in cancer and inflammatory diseases and the mechanisms of action of therapeutic drugs targeting signaling proteins, and he directs multi-disciplinary research in the LSP that uses mathematical and experimental approaches to develop and apply new concepts in drug discovery. Dr. Sorger received his AB from Harvard College, PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge University U.K., under the supervision of Hugh Pelham and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco with Harold Varmus and Andrew Murray. Prior to founding HiTS, Dr. Sorger served as a Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at MIT and cofounded Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and Glencoe Software.

Monica Ruse, PhD leads strategic planning, fosters interdisciplinary collaborations, and oversees research operations across the program’s components, including the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology and the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science. Monica previously held leadership roles in biomedical research administration at Harvard Medical School and the Population Council, an international non-profit NGO headquartered in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in Cell Physiology from Case Western Reserve University and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from University of Bucharest.

Sandro Santagata, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Deptartment of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He practices neuropathology focusing on brain tumor diagnosis. Dr. Santagata directs the development and implementation of methods to image cancer tissues, extracting molecular information that sheds light on how cancers form and then develop aggressive features. Over the next years, we will use these new methods to build a richer understanding of the biology of cancer and immune cells in their native setting.