Dr. Kemp received a BA in Biology from Case Western Reserve University, an MS in Fisheries Toxicology from Oregon State University and PhD in Experimental Oncology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  His PhD thesis focused on the genetic and hormonal basis of hepatocellular carcinoma using mouse models.  He did postdoctoral research with Allan Balmain at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow Scotland studying the role of Hras and p53 in multistage cancer using mouse models.  He has been at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for over 30 years where he studied the role of tumor suppressor genes including p19/Arf, Atm, Cdkn1b/p27 and Ctcf in cancer progression.  He is currently using functional genomic approaches to identify new cancer drug targets using a range of patient derived tumor models. Learn more about Dr. Kemp

Dr. Ahmad is a postdoctoral fellow in the Kemp Lab. She is investigating the fundamental mechanisms of genome dysregulation in pancreatic and ovarian cancer. She uses patient samples and PDTOs to model drug resistance, study genomic and epigenomic landscapes influencing oncogenic pathways and metastasis, and identify actionable therapeutic targets to provide personalized treatment for metastatic and drug-resistant cancers. Dr. Ahmad has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and did her Ph.D. research at RIKEN Yokohama, Japan. 

Kay Gurley started her career in labs focused on Transplantation Immunology.  She worked in labs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, McGill University, the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and at Stanford University.  After working at a biotech start up for two years, she decided to return to academia.  She relocated to Seattle where she became the first employee of the Kemp Lab. She has worked on various projects starting with mouse models of cancer particularly focusing on the repair genes DNA-PKcs and ATM.  She discovered a synthetic lethality between Atm and DNA-PKcs in embryogenesis.  Other projects included ATM’s role in apoptosis after irradiation, and DNA-PK’s role in Acute GI syndrome.  Currently she is validating novel targets in mouse squamous cell carcinomas and patient-derived breast cancer cells that were discovered using siRNA screens.

Russell Moser is currently working to identify novel therapeutic targets for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) as part of an NCI-funded program Cancer Target Discovery and Development (CTD2). He received his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.