The final staff appreciation event of this fiscal year will be on Friday at the UCSF Parnassus campus.

Longtime faculty member Claire Brindis has been appointed to direct the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies.

A UCSF research pioneer in breast cancer – a disease that still kills about 40,000 US women each year – will co-lead a new, $16.5 million effort to develop more effective, targeted therapies to vanquish various types of breast tumors, including cancers that are particularly unresponsive to current treatments.

A new device allows surgeons to enter the body through a single cut in the navel – a method that may result in less pain, fewer scars and a shorter recovery time than with traditional, multiple-incision procedures.

San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell introduced a resolution on June 9 that, if passed, will allow for the operation of a helipad at the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay.

New UCSF Faculty, June 2009