January 11, 2020
Dr. Jeremy Rich
UPMC Hillman Cancer Center recently announced the appointment of Jeremy Rich, M.D., M.H.S., M.B.A., as deputy director of research. Rich will also serve as the Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Personalized Cancer Therapy and a professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Rich will help oversee Hillman’s strategic cancer research efforts, leveraging our world-class research and clinical care expertise to significantly enhance our translational and team science programs.
“We are thrilled to have Jeremy join our senior leadership at Hillman. He is an exceptional physician-scientist who brings a wealth of experience leading multidisciplinary team science efforts, in addition to his clinical and research expertise in advanced brain tumors,” said Robert Ferris, M.D., Ph.D., director of UPMC Hillman. “Jeremy will help Hillman reach new levels of translational research excellence that will benefit patients with cancer in our region and around the world. We are grateful for this endowed chair from the Pittsburgh Foundation, helping us to bring him here and to support his work at Hillman.”
Rich is a board-certified neuro-oncologist and renowned physician-scientist specializing in diagnosing and treating brain tumors, with a focus on brain metastases. He works collaboratively with neurosurgeons and medical and radiation oncologists to help create personalized treatment plans for patients. He is an internationally recognized researcher in brain tumor biology, studying cancer stem cells’ clinical relevance and how they interact with the tumor microenvironment to help the cancers grow and resist current treatments.
“I’m incredibly excited to join Hillman and be a catalyst, sparking ideas and collaborations between our outstanding physicians and scientists that will keep us at the cutting edge of translational cancer research,” said Rich. “Hillman’s strength is the close integration of world-class research with one of the largest networks of nationally-ranked cancer centers in the country. This means that when we are able to take a new cancer therapy from the lab bench to the clinic, it can almost immediately be accessed by thousands of Hillman patients, which is powerful.”
Rich received his M.D. from Duke University and completed his neurology residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and a fellowship in neuro-oncology at Duke University Medical Center. He also holds a Master of Health Sciences in Clinical Leadership from Duke University and a Master’s in Business Administration from Baldwin Wallace University.
Before his appointment at Hillman, Rich served as a professor of medicine, director of the Brain Tumor Institute and co-director of the Solid Tumor Therapeutics Program at the University of California San Diego. Before that, he was chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Cleveland Clinic.
Rich also takes pride in being an active mentor, having trained over 50 undergraduate, graduate and medical students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom have taken leadership roles in academia and industry.
About Dr. Rich
He has authored over 250 publications and serves on several journals’ editorial boards, including Cancer Discovery, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Research, Neuro-Oncology and PLoS Biology. He has received numerous awards, including the National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator Award in 2015, and is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Neurological Association and the American Association for Physicians.
