Dr. Riccardo Dalla-Favera is the Uris Professor of Clinical Medicine, Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology, Professor of Genetics and Development, Professor Microbiology and Immunology, and Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics, Columbia University.

Dr. Dalla-Favera received his medical degree and completed his residency in Hematology at the University of Milan.  During a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, he initiated pioneering studies on the cloning of human oncogenes and their role in initiating cancer.  In 1982, he discovered the involvement of the MYC oncogene in chromosomal translocations associated with Burkitt Lymphoma, and subsequently, identified several mutated genes involved in lymphomagenesis.  For the past 20 years, Dr. Dalla-Favera has provided key leadership to the cancer research community at Columbia University Medical Center, particularly in his roles as founding Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics, and from 2005-2011, Director of Columbia University’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Dalla-Favera’s research continues to yield new insights into the origins of human cancer and his discoveries represent much of the current knowledge on the genetic lesions and biological mechanisms responsible for human B cell lymphoma.  The molecular lesions identified by Dr. Dalla-Favera have led to the development of diagnostic tests and are being tested as targets in clinical trials with lymphoma patients.  His work is widely quoted in scientific publications and in medicine and oncology textbooks.  Dr. Dalla-Favera has been recognized with several national awards, including the Stohlman Scholar Award from the Leukemia Society of America, two NIH MERIT Awards (1989, 2005), the “Outstanding Achievement Award” for the American-Italian Cancer Foundation (2005), and the 2006 William Dameshek Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Hematology from the American Society of Hematology.  He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2011, received the Alfred Knudson Award from the National Cancer Institute in 2012, and in 2014 was a recipient of the OncLive Giants of Cancer Care Award.  In April 2015 Dr. Dalla-Favera was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.