Prof. Robert Beckman

Robert Beckman, M.D. is currently Professor of Oncology and of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Biomathematics at Georgetown University Medical Center and Scientific Advisor to the Senior Vice President for Research, Georgetown University. He is an oncology clinical researcher and mathematical biologist, whose goals are to develop cancer therapies and to improve the way cancer therapies are developed and deployed in patients, with emphasis on personalized medicine, tumor heterogeneity, and tumor evolution. 

Educated at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Beckman did his clinical training in Pediatrics at Stanford University and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Michigan, and postdoctoral work in nucleic acid and protein biophysics at Fox Chase Cancer Center (on a National Cancer Institute Physician Scientist Award) and the Bristol Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute.  Previous academic appointments include the University of Michigan Biophysics faculty; Member in Systems Biology, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and Visiting Scientist at the Biomolecular Structure and Drug Design Group, Warner Lambert Pharmaceuticals. 

Dr. Beckman studies cancer evolution and its impact on optimization of therapeutic strategies. These studies predicted broad features of tumor sequencing results before these were available, and have more recently led to a new approach to cancer precision medicine, dynamic precision medicine, which holds promise for significant improvement in patient outcomes. 

Dr. Beckman has played significant leadership roles in developing new oncology clinical research groups at 4 pharmaceutical companies. His clinical research career spans numerous pathways and technology platforms. He has brought 23 molecules into early development, 5 into late development and 2 to market, and pioneered one of the first oncology clinical research programs in pediatric cancers. He has particular expertise in antibody therapy of cancer. 

Dr. Beckman has invented novel clinical strategies for proof of concept studies and for biomarker driven clinical development, including a confirmatory basket trial. He currently leads an international group of approximately 250 government, industry, and academic statisticians and clinicians, the Innovative Design Scientific Working Group (IDSWG), working on innovative clinical trial designs for both rare and common diseases.

Dr. Beckman’s versatile publication record of approximately 300 articles, patents, and abstracts ranges from computational chemistry to clinical oncology, emphasizing quantitative approaches.