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Kimryn Rathmell

Professor and Chair of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Director, Division of Hematology and Oncology
Hugh J. Morgan Chair in Medicine
Professor of Biochemistry


Dr. Kimryn Rathmell is a physician-scientist focused on renal cell carcinoma. She earned her MD and PhD in biophysics at Stanford University, completed internal medicine training at the University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania, and completed a medical oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the Departments of Medicine and Genetics at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2003, and was a founding member of the Department of Urology in 2013. She helped to lead several Cancer Genome Atlas efforts and has a clinical and translational trials program focused on pre-operative therapy and integrated genomics and functional imaging. In the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, she served as the Associate Director for Education and Training, and she has been involved with the UNC Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) since 2004, acting as co-director. She also has leadership roles in the American Society of Clinical Oncology, having served on the Fellows and Junior Faculty Task Force, the Ethics Committee, and currently as the Tumor Biology Track Leader for the Education Committee. She was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigators (ASCI) in 2011 and currently serves on the ASCI Council as the Secretary/Treasurer and as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Clinical Investigation. She has held roles in the Kidney Cancer Association, Society of Urologic Oncology, NIH Kidney Cancer Task Force, and VHL Alliance, and holds a K24 supporting her mentoring activities of physician-scientists. In sum, her interests and experience make her ideally positioned to lead the Division of Hematology and Oncology in the Vanderbilt Department of Medicine.