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Volume 4, Article 4

November, 2004

Dr. Renee Fister
Receives Recognition for Cancer Research

Dr. K. Renee Fister has been recognized for her contribution to mathematical techniques applied to cancer problems. She and other international researchers have been interviewed for a recent article in SIAM News, the news journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, for which there are currently 12,000 subscribers. Her joint work with Dr. Carl Panetta at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on optimal control applied to chemotherapy is highlighted.

     There is a personal component depicted in the article. "When Dr. Fister was three years old, she lost her younger brother, then 18 months old, to cancer. Growing up, she hoped to go to medical school so that she could fight the disease that claimed her brother. She discovered that she did not have the stomach for medicine and that she liked mathematics. She changed her plans, but reluctantly. She thought she would not be able to work on cancer after that." However, that has not been the case.
     Dr. Fister has recently worked with Dr. Maeve McCarthy on techniques to identify chemotactic parameters in cancerous tumors. She is also working with researchers from Harvey Mudd College and oncologists from California on mathematical drug strategies to determine treatment regimens without invasive surgery.
     Dr. Fister, an associate professor of Mathematics and Statistics, received her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 1996. She is married to Kenny Fister and together they have two precious children, Kristopher and Bethany.

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