Christopher D. Willey is the Hale-Stephens ROAR Endowed Professor for Distinctive Research and the Associate Vice Chair of Translational Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Cellular Biology and Pathobiology from the Medical University of South Carolina in 2003. His lab is dedicated to the understanding of the abnormal signaling that governs cancer biology at the individual tumor level and then exploiting these processes for optimal treatment strategies. His research career has been focused on kinases, enzymatic proteins that control signaling within cells through their phosphorylation of other proteins.