Gary Chamness is a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, focusing on research in breast cancer with a secondary specialty in scientific writing. After degrees in biology from Caltech and in biochemistry from Berkeley, and three years service in the U.S. Air Force, he began his research career at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio until coming to Houston in 1999. He has also edited two international scientific journals and served on national grant review committees for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. Music has been a serious avocation, including stints as both a choral and an orchestral conductor for amateur and church groups, and membership in various choruses in Berkeley, San Antonio, and Houston. He has also developed skills in music printing, and has been responsible for the printing of most of Robert Avalon's published work. He became President of the Board of the Foundation for Modern Music in 2000, finding the challenge of bringing modern classical music to wider audiences sometimes frustrating but always exhilarating.