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Frank M. Torti, M.D., M.P.H.

Frank M. Torti, M.D., M.P.H., is the executive vice president for health affairs for the University of Connecticut Health Center and the eighth dean of the UConn School of Medicine. He was appointed by UConn President Susan Herbst, and assumed leadership of the Health Center on May 1, 2012. Torti also holds a Board of Trustees professorship in the Department of Medicine.

Torti joined the Health Center from Wake Forest University School of Medicine where he served as vice president for strategic programs, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, and chair of the Department of Cancer Biology. In addition, he previously served as the former principal deputy commissioner, chief scientist, and then acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At Wake Forest, he was responsible for the scientific leadership of the Comprehensive Cancer Center for nearly 20 years and also provided leadership to the cancer center’s clinical programs. He is a well-known physician and clinical investigator who has designed and executed clinical trials in urologic cancer that have been used throughout the world. He has been routinely selected by his peers in polls and in national magazines of “America’s Top Doctors” and “Top Cancer Doctors.”

Torti is involved in many national organizations and is the founding and past president of the Cancer Biology Training Consortium, a national society of cancer biology chairs and program directors that now involves 70 U.S. academic medical centers. He serves on the external advisory board for five comprehensive cancer centers, as well as the state of North Carolina’s Drug Discovery Center of Innovation’s Scientific advisory board. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of American Cancer Institutes and of the National Coalition for Cancer Research. He served on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and was recently appointed to the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials and Translational Research Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Advisors.

Torti received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University; his medical degree from Harvard Medical School (cum laude), and his Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, where he trained in cancer epidemiology and nutrition. He was an intern and resident at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and a fellow in medical oncology at Stanford University. While on the Stanford faculty, he served as executive officer of the Northern California Oncology Group and associate director of the Northern California Cancer Program. He was instrumental in the development and oversight of the data management functions and overall administration of that NCI-designated clinical cooperative group and its regional network in northern California.

Torti developed and is principal investigator of a training program in cancer biology that is funded by an NIH T32 grant. He has been continually funded by an NIH RO1 grant for his basic science research since his lab was established in 1988. He holds a MERIT award from the NIH, an honor bestowed on only five percent of all NIH grantees.