The University of Iowa is hosting the third finalist seeking to be the next vice president for research and economic development.

Mary J.C. Hendrix is a cancer biologist at Northwestern University and past faculty member at the UI. She will participate in a public forum on Monday, June 11, during which she will outline her vision for the position and take questions from the audience.

The forum will take place at 3 p.m. in the Illinois Room of the Iowa Memorial Union (348 IMU).

Hendrix also will meet with university faculty, staff, and administration leaders during her campus visit.

Hendrix is the president and scientific director of the Children’s Memorial Research Center in Chicago, which specializes in identifying and treating childhood diseases. Under her leadership, the center brought in more than $31 million in research funding in fiscal 2008, and its research technology portfolio has 12 patent filings and 41 clinical trials, according to the center’s website.

She also is the William G. Swartchild Jr. Distinguished Research Professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chicago. Her research seeks to identify genes that lead to the spread of cancer and to find the biological basis for new treatment options.

Hendrix has been involved in the policy arena. She has testified before the U.S. Congress to increase funding for biomedical research and to the Illinois state legislature on stem cell research. She also serves on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors.

Hendrix graduated from Shepherd College (now Shepherd University) in West Virginia. She earned her doctorate from George Washington University and spent three years as a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard Medical School. She joined the UI in 1996 as head of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in the Carver College of Medicine. She became deputydirector of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center three years later. Hendrix left the UI in 2004 for Northwestern.

See the vice president search website for Hendrix’s curriculum vitae and additional information about the UI position, including videos of each presentation.

The successful candidate will succeed Jordan Cohen, who has served as the vice president for research and economic development since 2010.