Elizabeth E. Brown, Ph.D., MPH, will be the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Associate Director for Population Science beginning January 1, 2024. Brown is the Endowed Professor of Cancer Pathobiology in the Department of Pathology at the Heersink School of Medicine, immediate past chair of the International Lymphoma and Epidemiology Consortium and co-leader of the O’Neal Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program.

Brown is an epidemiologist with expertise in genetics, immuno-epidemiology and cancer health disparities. She obtained her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and subsequently completed two fellowships at the National Cancer Institute (NCI); the first in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, and the second, in the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, Section of Immunogenetics and Molecular Epidemiology.

Brown joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2006 and served as an adjunct scientist at NCI from 2006 to 2010. She became co-leader of the Cancer Control and Population Sciences program of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Integrative Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology (IMAGE) laboratory in 2015. She is a founding member of the International Multiple Myeloma Consortium (IMMC) and continues to serve in a leadership capacity as immediate past chair of the International Lymphoma and Epidemiology (InterLymph) Consortium, which is central to setting research priorities to advance myeloma and lymphoma research. Her research is primarily focused on health disparities of multiple myeloma and other plasma cell dyscrasias, lymphoma and systemic lupus erythematosus. Her multidisciplinary studies in etiology, natural history, pathogenesis and outcomes enable the discovery of blood-based biomarkers for disease susceptibility, progression and clinical management, as well as the identification of new therapeutic targets.

Brown takes on this new role at a time when it is critical for us to promote and support thematic cross-disciplinary team science to address our most pressing questions in cancer risk, incidence treatment and survivorship. Please join us in welcoming her to this role and thanking Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., R.D., for her important contributions as the associate director for Population Science since 2010.