Stella Somiari

Stella B. Somiari, PhD, is a Senior Director at Windber Research Institute (WRI) where she conducts breast cancer research and directs the WRI comprehensive tissue bank. Dr Somiari led the conceptualization, design and setting up of the breast tissue repository in 2000, which serves the Department of Defense funded Clinical Breast Care Project (CBCP) at Windber Research Institute and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMC). In 2002, Dr Somiari developed a second WRI specific protocol for expansion of the WRI tissue bank to include a wider variety of good quality human biological specimens from other available sources.

Currently the Tissue Bank provides tissue to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support the Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA) and distributes tissue to researchers through a subcontracting relationship with the Eastern Zone of the National Cancer Institute - Cooperative Human Tissue Network (NCI/CHTN) and through BioServe, A USA based Global Biorepository. Dr. Somiari is an active member of the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER), serving on its Education and Training Committee and the Biospecimen Science Working Group. She served on the NCI/OBBR (Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research) committee which published BRISQ (Biospecimen Reporting for Improved Study Quality) in 2010..