W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, MMHC, became CEO of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in May 2025. She also holds the inaugural Jeri B. Block and Robert H. Schottenstein Distinguished Chair in Cancer, a $10 million endowed chair position – the largest ever established at Ohio State.
A leading expert in cancer, with achievements in translational research and treatment of complex and hereditary kidney cancers, Dr. Rathmell is responsible for the clinical and research excellence of Ohio State’s cancer program, including operational oversight of both The James and the Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Rathmell joins Ohio State from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) after serving as its 17th director from December 2023 to January 2025. During her tenure, she launched PROSPECT-Lung, the first pragmatic trial initiated under the NCI’s Clinical Trials Innovation Unit, and the Early-Onset Cancer Initiative to address the rising incidence of early-onset cancers. She also commissioned a working group report on building capacity for community-based clinical research.
Prior to leading the NCI, she served as a professor in the departments of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University, where she held the titles of Hugh Jackson Morgan Endowed Professor in the Department of Medicine, physician-in-chief of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and chair of the Department of Medicine from 2020 to 2023.
Her time at Vanderbilt began in 2015 as the Cornelius A. Craig Professor in the Department of Medicine and director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In 2019, she became deputy director of Research Integration and Career Development at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
She previously held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2003 to 2015, where she led a clinical and translational trials program focused on pre-operative therapy, integrated genomics and functional imaging in kidney cancer.
Dr. Rathmell has pioneered basic science investigation of kidney cancer. She works to reveal the biological diversity of these tumors and the novel mechanisms of cancer promotion, paving the way for new therapeutics. Her research has resulted in more than 300 articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
A champion of medical science, ethics in medicine, and academic and physician-scientist career development, she’s created national mentorship networks and forged pathways for physician-scientist recognition and career impact. Through the years, she’s mentored hundreds of junior researchers. For her efforts, she was honored with the American Society of Clinical Investigation’s Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award in 2025, and with Vanderbilt’s Advanced Practice Ambassador award in 2023.
Dr. Rathmell’s national visibility has earned her election into the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she’s a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She’s held leadership roles with the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (Kidney Cancer Research Program), the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Physician Scientists Association and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, serving as its president in 2019.
She was a leading cancer researcher with the NCI Cancer Genome Atlas’s (TCGA) kidney cancer projects and served as a TCGA analysis working group member across the spectrum of cancers, winning the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research Team Science Award. She’s served on the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors and on the Forbeck Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. Additionally, the National Institutes of Health has sought her expertise for more than 15 years for various projects and committees.
Highly decorated for her clinical accomplishments, Dr. Rathmell received in 2025 the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor and the UChicago Medical & Biological Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation honored her with its Paragon Award for Research Excellence in 2023. And in 2019, the Kidney Cancer Association bestowed upon her its Eugene P. Schonfeld Award.
Dr. Rathmell earned both her PhD in biophysics and her medical degree from Stanford University. She completed an internship in internal medicine at the University of Chicago and an internal medicine residency and medical oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2022, she received her Master of Management in Health Care from the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management.
Read how Dr. Rathmell plans to bring big ideas, hard work on the ground, to her new role as CEO of Ohio State’s cancer program.