Dinesh Rao, MD, Wins the 2007 Joanne Levy, MD, Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement

The Joanne Levy, MD, Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement is given to the current ASH Scholar with the highest scoring abstract for the ASH annual meeting as determined by the appointed abstract reviewers. ASH is honored to offer this award, made possible by the Levy family to continue the legacy of their daughter, Joanne, a past ASH Scholar Award recipient and distinguished Society member who passed away in 2004. Dr. Levy graduated from Harvard Medical School and went on to receive many prestigious awards and honors before receiving an ASH Junior Faculty Scholar Award in 2000 for research on the genetic regulation of iron metabolism at Children’s Hospital Boston.

This year’s winner is Dinesh S. Rao, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Rao is a hematopathologist with clinical and research interests in neoplastic hematolymphoid disorders. He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He completed a research fellowship at the University of Michigan prior to completing his residency and fellowship in anatomic pathology and hematopathology, respectively, at UCLA.

Currently, Dr. Rao is a clinical instructor and holds the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria fellowship in disease research and clinical innovation at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His current research involves the role of microRNA in lymphoid development and neoplasia. He is also working on developing novel immunotherapeutic approaches to B-cell malignancies. Dr. Rao is working under the mentorship of the renowned scientist and Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore at the California Institute of Technology.

"Dr. Dinesh Rao certainly deserves the award. ... He has only been in my laboratory for about a year, but his curiosity, ideas, and skills have made him an invaluable collaborator with many others in the lab. Meanwhile, he has set out on an ambitious program of his own, which looks to be a very exciting new approach to immune cell differentiation," said Dr. Baltimore. "He is sure to go far in hematology."

By including basic scientific and translational components into his research, Dr. Rao hopes to transition into an independent research career that includes important research in disease as well as biology.

This article originally ran in the December 10, 2007, issue of ASH News Daily.