{"id":203916,"date":"2024-09-19T12:45:03","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T22:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=203916"},"modified":"2024-09-20T16:10:38","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T02:10:38","slug":"wu-nominated-state-employee-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2024\/09\/19\/wu-nominated-state-employee-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> Cancer Center\u2019s Wu nominated for State Employee of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"3
Lang Wu, center, with Board of Regents Chair Gabriel Lee, left, and UH<\/abbr> President David Lassner, right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Cancer Center associate professor Lang Wu is the 2024 UH<\/abbr> nominee for the Governor\u2019s Award for Distinguished State Service Employee of the Year. Wu is the founding director of the UH<\/abbr> Pacific Center for Genome Research<\/a> (PCGR<\/abbr>), established in 2023 through a $10.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I’m very excited and also humbled to receive this nomination on behalf of UH<\/abbr>,” said Wu after receiving the nomination at the September 19 Board of Regents meeting at Leeward Community College. “This recognition certainly goes beyond my personal effort, it is truly a team effort<\/a>, especially by our PCGR<\/abbr> co-director and the directors of the PCGR<\/abbr> Workforce Development Core and the PCGR<\/abbr> Community Engagement Core.”<\/p>\n

The center is composed of over a dozen investigators across three units\u2014UH<\/abbr> Cancer Center, UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa John A Burns School of Medicine and UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. It aims to foster innovative genomic research for diverse and underrepresented populations and is one of only two full-scale Diversity Centers for Genome Research in the entire U.S.<\/p>\n

‘Health benefits to all’<\/h2>\n
\"two
Lang Wu, right, working Youping Deng in the lab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The goal of our center is to bring health benefits across different populations, including the underserved populations of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islands, here,” said Wu. “I’m very excited for this recognition and we will work even harder to make sure we achieve our goal to bring health benefits to all.”<\/p>\n

When presenting the award, UH<\/abbr> President David Lassner commented on Wu\u2019s contributions beyond the establishment of the center and its important research.<\/p>\n

“The center\u02bbs Genomic Workforce Development Core provides a graduate-level ‘workforce-in-training’ program to help expand career pathways for scientists, researchers and other genomic careers,” said Lassner. “Dr. Wu\u02bbs own research has generated important findings with significant implications for prostate and pancreatic cancer prevention and prediction. In addition to offering numerous publications, presenting at conferences and teaching classes, he also finds time to mentor students at high school, undergraduate and graduate levels.”<\/p>\n

The UH<\/abbr> Maui College culinary team<\/a> is this year\u2019s UH<\/abbr> nominee for the Governor\u2019s Award for Distinguished State Service Team of the Year award<\/a>, which was announced at the August 15 BOR meeting at UH<\/abbr> Maui. <\/p>\n

Each state department may submit one nominee for each award category, who then go on to compete for the Governor\u2019s Awards, which will be announced on September 24, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lang Wu is the founding director of the UH<\/abbr> Pacific Center for Genome Research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[212,31,698,169,9],"class_list":["post-203916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-john-a-burns-school-of-medicine","tag-staff-recognition","tag-uh-cancer-center","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203916"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204014,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203916\/revisions\/204014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}