As a clinical pathologist, cytogeneticist/geneticist, and director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s cytogenetics laboratory, I am responsible for supervising the cytogenetic and molecular cytogenetic evaluation of 5,500 clinical samples each year to help diagnose patients with hematopoietic and solid tumors. I also oversee strategic planning for the laboratory’s technologies, instrumentation, staffing, budget, and regulatory issues.
The main focus of my research is to define the role of cytogenetic and molecular genetic changes in the development, diagnosis, progression, and clinical behavior of various solid tumors, and my research contributions have been published in more than 200 papers. In recognition of these contributions, in 1999 I was invited to deliver the first Hungerford Memorial Lecture, established in the memory of the co-discoverer of the Philadelphia chromosome, the first cancer related cytogenetic abnormality, and in 2010 I was elected as a Foreign Fellow of the distinguished National Academy of Sciences, India.
Over the past 15 years I have served as a course director or symposia chair at various
