LEADERSHIP, PLANNING AND EVALUATION PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Effective and proactive leadership, planning, and evaluation are essential to the success of Yale Cancer Center’s (YCC) mission. Leadership, Planning and Evaluation (LPE) activities are instrumental in supporting YCC’s goals of fostering the most impactful science, translating Yale science into ground-breaking clinical advances, developing innovative public health and prevention strategies, training the next generation of leaders in cancer research and reducing the burden of cancer throughout our catchment area and beyond. YCC Director, Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, has overall responsibility for LPE and works closely with Associate Director, Research Affairs, Robert Garofalo, PhD, who oversees the implementation and progress of the Strategic Plan and leads the Administrative team that provides the organizational and analytical support for LPE activities. Dr. Fuchs benefits from input from the YCC Leadership committees, including the Mini-Cab and Executive Committee (EC), both of which he Chairs, and from the External Scientific Advisory Board (ESAB), the Internal Advisory Board (IAB), the Shared Resource Oversight Committee (SROC), Membership Committee and the Education and Training Committee (ETC). Together, the internal and external advisory, operational and leadership committees help to maximize YCC’s success by providing in-depth evaluation and thorough, expert direction for all basic, translational, clinical, and population-based programmatic areas, shared resources, center administration, and the essential characteristics of an NCI Designated Cancer Center. Based on recommendations from internal and external advisory groups, the YCC Director and Senior Leadership have developed an innovative and comprehensive Strategic Plan to set the course for YCC over the next three to five years. Outcomes of planning and evaluation activities over the last funding period included numerous strategic and operational decisions made by Senior Leadership, as represented in the Director’s Mini-Cabinet (Mini-Cab) and Executive Committee, during the funding period that advanced multiple aspects of our plan to propel the Center’s mission forward. These include: increasing translational activity in all Research Programs through new internal grant programs;; key recruitments and collaborations;; developing the Translational Immuno-Oncology Laboratory (TIL);; reorganizing our Biostatistics Shared Resource;; establishing the Translational Research Core Committee charged with developing infrastructure to enhance research access to clinical genomic information and biospecimens;; recruitment of Cancer Biology Institute faculty and physician-scientists;; generating new institutional support to enhance key shared resource initiatives;; reorganizing Clinical Trials Office procedures to improve activation times;; launching the Diversity and Health Equity (D&HE) team to promote co...