Happy new year to everyone, and with the change to January, there will again be some comings and goings of the faculty. I know I can speak for the entire GRACE community when I express my thanks to Dr. Pinder for her great help this past month, and we'll definitely have her back. Fortunately, Dr. Weiss has agreed to continue to participate in our discussions for January as well.

Also ringing in the new year with us will be some faculty who are coming back after relatively short or long absences. The ever-fabulous Dr. Stephanie Harman, head of the Palliative Care Program at Stanford University, is just coming off of maternity leave after having her first baby, Jack (I presume she didn't name him after me, but perhaps she does regard me that highly), in October, so I offer my congratulations and thanks for coming back to work with us while juggling home life and her return to regular work responsibilities.

Dr. Shirish Gadgeel is also a faculty member who has participated here and there in the past few years. He has written a few posts, now more than a year old (in our "classics" section) but was also kind enough to speak at our NSCLC Patient Education Forum in Seattle this past September on management principles for stage III NSCLC. He is a medical oncologist and lung cancer expert at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center at Wayne State University in Detroit, and he has also been a friend in the field for many years. I'm very happy to have him participate on a more regular basis in the coming weeks.

I hope you'll find great discussions and valuable answers to your questions.