Virologist Kenney to join UW School of Medicine and Public Health

Shannon C. Kenney, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, will join the faculty of the UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) in July.

Kenney, an infectious disease specialist, is also a highly respected researcher who focuses on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley made the announcement today (Feb. 13). “Dr. Kenney is an exceptional physician scientist, and we are extremely fortunate that she will be joining us,” Wiley says.

Wiley also announced that Kenney’s husband, Robert N. Golden, would be the new dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. “This dual hire represents a major win-win combination for the university,” Wiley adds.

To be based in the UW Department of Medicine, Kenney will also have an appointment in the school’s Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. She expects to spend approximately 80 percent of her time in her laboratory.

“We are positively delighted that Shannon Kenney will be joining us,” says Paul DeLuca, vice dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health and senior associate dean for research and graduate studies. “She is an outstanding scientist who has a very impressive track record and a stellar research program. She will add great depth to our scientific program.”

Kenney studies how EBV, a common virus that has been linked to Hodgkin’s disease, other lymphomas, nasopharyngeal carcinoma and gastric cancers, is regulated in human cells.

“We study why this virus can remain silent, or latent, for long periods of time and then sometimes become activated into a form that can be infectious,” Kenney explains.

Kenney has recently become interested in using the virus to treat patients and cure EBV-related malignancies. “We want to figure out how to make the virus change from a latent state into an active form so that the virus itself will kill the cancer,” she says.

A research scientist with the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Kenney will add significantly to the already strong program in human cancer virology that exists at the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center (UWCCC), where scientists are working on a variety of viruses associated with human cancer – including EBV.

She praised the school’s excellent EBV researchers – Bill Sugden and Janet Mertz, both based in the UWCCC’s McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research – and also cited the quality of the UW–Madison Department of Medicine, its division of infectious diseases and the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.

“Very few places in the country have this fantastic combination of excellence,” she says. “These were very important factors in my decision to make the move.”

Kenney earned a bachelor’s degree in geology (magna cum laude) from Yale University in 1975. She received her M.D. from Yale in 1979.

Following a four-year residency in medicine and pediatrics at UNC, Kenney undertook a two-year research fellowship at the Laboratory of the Biology of Viruses at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and a two-year infectious disease fellowship at UNC.

Her research program has been funded continually by the National Institutes of Health. She has taught doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in her lab, as well as medical students and infectious disease fellows. She plans to continue these activities at UW–Madison.

Kenney has been elected to several prestigious societies, including the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American Clinical and Climatological Association.

Kenney and Golden have four children, two of whom still live at home. “Madison’s excellent school system was another big draw for us,” she notes.