Jonathan D. Licht, MD, has been appointed Director of the University of Florida (UF) Health Cancer Center, Gainesville. His appointment will go into effect on October 1.
Dr. Licht comes to UF Health from Northwestern University. He is currently Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, the Johanna Dobe Professor of Hematology/Oncology, Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation and on the editorial boards of numerous peer-reviewed cancer journals. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and is on the faculty of the ASH/European Hematology Association Translational Research Training in Hematology joint program. Dr. Licht sits on the Medical/Scientific Board of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and is a member of the Basic Mechanisms of Cancer Therapeutics Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Licht’s research efforts aim to combat blood cancers such as leukemias and lymphomas by developing inhibitors against abnormally expressing epigenetic enzymes and proteins. In 2012, he received a $6.25 million grant from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to forward this line of research. He is also one of the principal investigators behind a $9.6 million grant Northwestern University received this year from the National Cancer Institute.
He has published 170 peer-reviewed articles, and his research has been cited more than 10,000 times.
As UF Health Cancer Center Director, Dr. Licht succeeds Paul Okunieff, MD.
Before arriving at Northwestern, Dr. Licht was Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He earned his medical degree at Columbia University and completed a residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. ■
