People

Linda J. Burns, MD, a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, became president of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) at the organization's annual meeting this month. Serving a 1-year term, she succeeds Janis Abkowitz, MD.

Burns maintains an active clinical practice and serves as medical director of the Inpatient Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Fairview-University Medical Center in Minneapolis. Her research focuses on therapies such as stem cell transplantation and immunotherapy for malignant hematologic disorders, as well as complications of transplantation, such as infections.

In addition to serving on numerous ASH committees, including those related to medical education and hematology subspecialty training, she has trained more than 80 fellows.

Pier Paolo Pandolfi, MD, PhD, has been named director of the cancer center and the new Cancer Research Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, MA. BIDMC is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

A prolific investigator who has published hundreds of scientific papers, Pandolfi is a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of the BIDMC Cancer Genetics Program and chief of the medical center's Division of Genetics.

Pandolfi studies the molecular mechanisms and genetics underlying the pathogenesis of leukemias, lymphomas, and solid tumors, and models these tumors in mice. He characterized the function of the fusion oncoproteins and the genes involved in acute promyelocytic leukemia, leading to the development of therapies for the disease.