Lisa Kachnic, MD, former Professor and Chair of Radiation Oncology and Associate Director of Multidisciplinary Cancer Research at Boston University School of Medicine, and Chief of Radiation Oncology at Boston Medical Center, has been named Professor and Chair of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Radiation Oncology. She joined the faculty on September 21.
Dr. Kachnic, who also served on the Radiation Oncology faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and is a fellow of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), succeeds Arnold Malcolm, MD, MBA, who retired from the position in December 2014.
As the new Chair, Dr. Kachnic will be responsible for overseeing a department delivering oncology services at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, focused on scientific discovery and educating leaders. The program also includes a thriving residency program that trains academic clinicians and physician scientists, as well as the nation’s first accredited medical physics professional doctorate program.
History of Leadership
Dr. Kachnic is internationally recognized for her clinical trial leadership positions in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and its cooperative group research bases. She is actively involved in the NRG Oncology Gastrointestinal and Patient-Reported Outcome Strategic Committees, and is the Co-Chair of their NCI Community Oncology Research Program in Cancer Control and Prevention. She is Vice Chair of the NCI Anorectal Cancer Taskforce, and Co-Chair of the Anorectal Committee for the Southwest Oncology Group, where she also serves as their Multimodality Executive Officer.
In addition to serving as Scientific Committee Vice-Chair and Editor of ASTRO’s newsletter, Dr. Kachnic chaired ASCO’s 2014 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium, is a member of the Annual Meeting’s Scientific Program Committee, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Gastrointestinal Cancer Research. ■
