Rakesh K Jain

Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA

Rakesh Jain Picture Rakesh Jain is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Edwin L Steele Laboratory of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Focusing on tumour biology and in vivo imaging, he has developed an array of imaging technologies and animal and mathematical models. His work has provided novel insight into the molecular, cellular, anatomical and functional workings of solid tumors and the role of host-tumor interactions. He has translated this insight into improved strategies for cancer detection and treatment (Science 307:58-62, 2005).

His work has been recognised by numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983-1984), Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (1990-1991), the Outstanding Investigator Grant of the National Cancer Institute (1993-2000), the Academic Scientist of the Year Award from the Pharmaceutical Achievements Awards (2005), and the Distinguished Service Award at the Nature Biotechnology Winter Meeting on Angiogenesis (2006). He is a member of the Institute of Medicine (2003) and National Academy of Engineering (2004) of the US National Academies.

Rakesh Jain received his MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering in 1974 and 1976 from the University of Delaware, India. He served as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University (1976 to 1978), and as Assistant (1978-79), Associate (1979-83) and Full Professor (1983-1991) of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, before joining Harvard in 1991.