DRIVE Meeting

Hematology Oncology of Indiana, a Division of American Oncology Network

• Partner

Indy Hematology Education Inc.

• President and CEO

Marian University: Wood College of Osteopathic Medicine

• Clinical Professor of Medicine

Ruemu E. Birhiray, MD is an attending physician in medical oncology, hematology, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at Hematology-Oncology of Indiana, and at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. After completing his internal medicine residency at Columbus Hospital in Chicago where he also served as Chief Medical Resident in 1994, he was a postgraduate fellow in bone marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland where his research included gene therapy and adoptive cellular immunotherapy strategies in bone marrow transplantation. Dr. Birhiray’s professional experience has also included serving as an attending physician, and Director of bone marrow transplantation and a member of Marshfield Clinic, Wisconsin and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin from 1998 to 2001. Additionally Dr. Birhiray was appointed an Associate Professor of bone marrow transplantation at Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 2001, prior to joining Hematology Oncology of Indiana. Subsequently, Dr. Birhiray, served as and director of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Institutional Principal Investigator for the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project of the National Cancer Institute at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Indianapolis. Currently, he is also, Clinical Professor, Marian University School of Osteopathic Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana, and an Editorial Board Member of The Journal of Blood Transfusion and Hematopathology. Projects for which Dr. Birhiray is principal investigator include reduced intensity allogeneic transplantation in hematologic malignancies, and a trial of Interferon A, CHOP, and rituximab therapy in advanced-stage follicular lymphoma, and neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Additional collaborations have included major phase III clinical trials. Additionally Dr. Birhiray founded the Clinical research program at Hematology Oncology of Indiana. His awards include, “Intern of the year” from Columbus Hospital, Hope award from the Indiana Wellness community and named “best physician” by the Indianapolis monthly magazine and “top doctor” by Castle Connelly. In 2002, Dr. Birhiray founded and has served as Chair of the annual “Indy Hematology Review”, a nationally respected program providing education for hematologists and oncologists nationally and regionally, and he is also President and CEO of Indy Hematology Education, Inc. A member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology, and the American Medical Association, Dr Birhiray has published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Leukemia, Gene Therapy and Therapeutic Apheresis, Journal of Blood Transfusion and Hematopathology, Human Immunology, Familial Cancer, Annals of Pharmacotherapy, American Journal of Health System Pharmacists, Pharmacotherapy, in addition to multiple abstracts. Dr. Birhiray is married to Donna Marie (nee Baynard) since 1995, and they are blessed with 3 children, a daughter, Maya, born in 1999, and a son, Dirin, born in 2003, and an older daughter Meaghan who was born in 1990.

United States of America

• Former US Surgeon General

Purdue University

• Presidential Fellow

• Executive Director of the Center for Community Health Enhancement and Learning

• Distinguished Professor of Practice, Pharmacy Practice and Public Health

Dr. Jerome Adams is a physician, public health leader, and tireless advocate for health equity, whose work continues to shape the nation’s response to some of its most urgent health challenges. Dr. Adams currently serves as a Presidential Fellow and Executive Director of the Center for Community Health Enhancement and Learning at Purdue University and holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Practice in the departments of Pharmacy Practice and Public Health. However, he is perhaps best known for his service as the 20th Surgeon General of the United States.

During his time as Surgeon General, Dr. Adams served as the operational head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, overseeing over 6,000 uniformed health officers. His leadership helped guide the nation through a series of historic public health crises, including three consecutive category 5 hurricanes and, most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Adams worked to ensure the nation's response was not only grounded in science but also mindful of the deep racial, socioeconomic, and geographic disparities that COVID-19 laid bare. He became a visible and trusted communicator, working to bring lifesaving information directly to underserved and disproportionately affected communities.

Throughout his tenure, Dr. Adams used the platform of Surgeon General to issue several influential calls to action and public health advisories. These included:

• The Surgeon General’s Advisory on Naloxone and Opioid Overdose—the first advisory from a Surgeon General in over a decade—urging more widespread access to naloxone to reduce overdose deaths and save lives during the opioid epidemic.

• A Call to Action to Improve Maternal Health, which brought national attention to the alarming rates of maternal mortality in the U.S., especially among Black and Indigenous women, and promoted evidence-based solutions to address disparities.

• A Call to Action on Hypertension Control, emphasizing the urgent need to address one of the nation’s most preventable causes of disease and death—particularly in underserved populations.

• And a landmark report on Community Health and Economic Prosperity, which made a compelling case that improving public health is not only a moral imperative, but an economic one.

Earlier in his career, as Indiana’s State Health Commissioner, Dr. Adams was at the center of the response to the HIV crisis in Scott County—one of the most severe outbreaks in U.S. history. His courage and data-driven advocacy helped shift policy in a deeply conservative state, leading to the legalization of syringe service programs and securing funding to address infant mortality and other pressing issues.

In addition to his public service roles, Dr. Adams has become a regular and trusted voice in national media, appearing frequently on television, radio, and digital platforms to advocate for public health and spotlight issues affecting marginalized communities. He is also a prolific writer, authoring numerous op-eds and opinion pieces that challenge complacency and call for bold action. In a recent STAT News article, Dr. Adams made a powerful case for continuing to invest in diversity, equity, and inclusion in health care, reminding us that DEI is not a political slogan, but a public health necessity.

Dr. Adams is a licensed anesthesiologist with a master’s degree in public health. Whether in the operating room, a policy briefing, or a church town hall, he brings the same mission: to serve the health of the whole community, especially those most often left behind.

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

• Professor of Medicine

German Lymphoma Alliance

• President

Prof. Martin Dreyling earned his MD in 1987 after studying medicine at Düsseldorf, Giessen, Tübingen, and Würzburg. He completed internships and residencies across Germany, received his doctorate in 1990, and conducted hematology/oncology research at the University of Chicago before habilitating in 2001 on the tumor suppressor region 9p21. Since 2007, he has served as Full Professor and Head of Medical Clinic III at LMU Munich, focusing on molecular mechanisms of lymphomagenesis, cell cycle dysregulation in mantle cell lymphoma, and innovative therapies for indolent lymphomas. A past-president of the German Lymphoma Alliance and EHA Executive Board member, Dr. Dreyling has authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles and received awards including the 2017 Hermansky Award and the 2021 John Ultmann Award.

American Society of Hematology (ASH)

• Immediate Past ASH President

Atrium Health Cancer Institute

• Professor of Medicine

• Senior Advisor to the President

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the HMS Center for Bioethics

• Faculty Member

Harvard Medical School

• Assistant Professor of Medicine

Andrew Hantel, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and faculty member in the Divisions of Leukemia and Population Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the HMS Center for Bioethics. He received his MD from Loyola University Chicago; trained in internal medicine, adult hematology/oncology, and medical ethics at the University of Chicago; and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in cancer population sciences at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Dr. Hantel's lab leverages health services and care delivery methods to address ethical dilemmas in cancer discovery and delivery. His current work focuses on equity in the contexts of research participation, artificial intelligence, and climate change.

Penn State Dickinson Law

• Elsie de R. and Samuel P. Orlando Distinguished Professor

• Professor of Law

Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic

• Founding Director

Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic

• Founding Director

Medha D. Makhlouf is a professor of law and the founding director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law. She is also an assistant professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine.

Professor Makhlouf’s research interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. Her current work focuses on immigrant access to health care and the many ways in which immigration status functions as a social determinant of health. Professor Makhlouf’s scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review, the Boston University Law Review, California Law Review Online, the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, and several other academic journals. Professor Makhlouf was selected as a Health Law Scholar by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and the Saint Louis University Center for Health Law Studies based on the originality of the thesis of her article, “Health Justice for Immigrants,” and its contribution to the scholarly literature. Her work on changes to public charge policy has been cited by litigants and amici curiae in four federal lawsuits challenging the 2019 regulations expanding the scope of public charge inadmissibility.

As director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, Professor Makhlouf supervises law students in direct representation of individuals who have health-harming legal needs. The Clinic aims to reduce health disparities and improve health in vulnerable communities through collaboration with medical providers and public health practitioners. Currently, the Clinic focuses on representing immigrants in matters involving access to health-supporting public benefits. Professor Makhlouf was named a 2020 Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity to support the Clinic’s work.

Professor Makhlouf received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Brown University and her law degree from Yale Law School. After law school, she served as a public interest fellow at the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project in Boston and at Asylum Access in Quito, Ecuador; as an associate attorney at Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston; and as the Medical-Legal Partnership Staff Attorney at the Central West Justice Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. She joined the faculty of Penn State Dickinson Law in 2015.

Indy Hematology Education, Inc.

• Medical Science Liaison

Indiana University School of Medicine

• First Year Medical Student

Maya N. Birhiray holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Health Sciences from Purdue University—West Lafayette and a Master of Science in Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Physiology from the Indiana University School of Medicine. Maya continues to pursue her medical education as a first year medical student at Indiana University School of Medicine. Serving as a Medical Science Liaison for Indy Hematology Education Inc. (IHE), Maya collaborates with IHE faculty and external organizations to plan and execute impactful educational events.

In addition to her liaison responsibilities, Maya is the co-author and creator of IHE’s DRIVE initiative, which aims to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity within cancer clinical research. Through this work, she is committed to fostering a more equitable healthcare environment and enhancing educational opportunities for all.

Indy Hematology Education, Inc.

• Medical Science Liaison

Samuel Ranger, MS supports oncology education initiatives with a focus on equity, inclusion, and community-centered care. His professional interests include increasing diversity in clinical trials, advancing patient advocacy, and ensuring accessible, evidence-based cancer education for both providers and patients. Samuel holds both a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in biology and is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and exploring national parks.

University of Nebraska Medical Center: Division of Hematology/Oncology

• Professor of Medicine

• Associate Vice Chair of Research, Department of Internal Medicine

• Medical Director of the Clinical Research Center (CRC)

• Medical Director of Cellular Therapies

Dr. Lunning is a Professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He serves the Department of Internal Medicine as the Associate Vice Chair of Research. He recently was appointed as an Assistant Vice Chancellor of Clinical Research and elected to serve on the Nebraska Medicine Medical Executive Committee as an at-large member.

He received his medical degree from Des Moines University in 2006. Dr. Lunning completed his internal medicine residency at UNMC where he served as Chief Medical Resident. He completed his Hematology/Oncology fellowship and served as the Hematology Chief Fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Lunning returned to UNMC in 2013 and has been active in clinical research, research mentoring, education, and patient care and was the recipient of the Distinguish Scientist Award in 2019.

Dr. Lunning has served on several National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s guidelines committees including the Immunotherapy Toxicity & T-cell lymphoma panels. He has served as an invited member of ASCO’s Cancer Education Committee on the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. He is the co-organizer of the Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference.

Indiana University School of Medicine

• Professor of Medicine

• Vera Bradley Professor of Oncology

• Professor of Medical & Molecular Genetics

• Program Leader - Precision Genomics

Dr. Schneider is a medical oncologist with clinical expertise in breast cancer and precision oncology and has aligned research interests in therapeutic individualization and disparities.

He is the founding director of the IU Health Precision Genomics Program, which has performed comprehensive next-generation sequencing (NGS) on more than 10,000 advanced cancer patients with intent to direct therapy options. He serves as the vice president of precision oncology for the IU Health system to best coordinate implementation and oversight of operations across sites. This program has served as a blueprint for several other successful precision medicine programs across the United States.

He was named as an inaugural member of the prestigious Komen Scientific Advisory Council and led a multi-institutional project with the support of a Susan G. Komen Promise Award. This work included comprehensive genomic evaluation across three randomized Phase III adjuvant breast cancer trials for which he made several sentinel observations.

He uncovered a higher likelihood of therapy-associated toxicity for patients of African descent (using ancestral classification) and found that germline genetic variants might further refine risk for one of the most clinically important toxicities, taxane-induced peripheral neuropathy. This work led to the development and conduct of EAZ171 (PI Schneider), one of the first NCI-cooperative group trials to focus accrual on Black patients with breast cancer with the goal of overcoming disparities by personalizing therapy in the curative setting. EAZ171 demonstrated personalization of therapy minimizes toxicity and dose reductions (Schneider et al, JCO 2024).

The Ohio State University

• Professor, Joint Faculty

  Marion N. Rowley Chair in Cancer Research Epidemiology

James Cancer Hospital

• Deputy Director for Population Sciences and Community Outreach

• Professor in the College of Medicine

Electra D. Paskett became the Marion N. Rowley Professor of Cancer Research at The Ohio State University in 2002. She is the director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control in the College of Medicine, a professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and the associate director for population sciences and program leader of the Cancer Control Program in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Paskett is also director of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at the James Cancer Hospital. Her research program is nationally recognized for studying cancer health disparities. It has four major areas of focus and has evolved to employ a "team science approach" to understanding and intervening in these problems, which include energy balance and cancer prevention; promoting the use of early-detection exams; improving access to diagnostic and treatment services; and lymphedema prevention.

University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center

• Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics

Todd Burus, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Kentucky and member of the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. His work focuses on utilizing technology and advanced statistical methods to improve cancer surveillance and the identification of cancer health disparities. Todd is the creator and lead developer of Cancer InFocus—a data gathering and visualization platform for simplifying the implementation of cancer surveillance dashboards that has been adopted by over 50 institutions. Todd is also one of the founders of the Catchment Area Research and Data Science (CARDS) interest group and a founding member of the Catchment Area Data Excellence (CADEx) meeting steering committee.

Mayo Clinic (Rochester MN)

• Assistant Professor of Medicine

Dr. Joselle Cook is a hematologist and oncologist, specializing in Myeloma, Amyloid and Plasma cell disorders at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic Rochester in the Division of Hematology. Her research focuses on determining the prevalence and biologic drivers of precursor plasma cell disorders, particularly in understudied and high-risk populations. She initiated the MAGIC study which is the first ever screening study of monoclonal gammopathies in people across the African Diaspora. She also is a researcher in novel immunotherapeutics, specifically oncolytic virotherapy for hematologic malignancies.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

• Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine (Hematology-Oncology)

• Physician Leader, Leukemia Clinical Research Unit

Catherine Lai, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor and the Physician Leader of the Leukemia Clinical Research Unit at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lai specializes in detecting, monitoring, and treating acute leukemia and myeloid malignancies in adults. Dr. Lai’s research focuses on integrating health outcomes into clinical trials with novel therapeutics, with a focus on measuring physiologic age and interventions to improve early mortality and overall survival, minimize treatment toxicity and maximize tolerability to therapy.

Most recently, Dr. Lai served as the Director of Leukemia at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC. She completed her Hematology/Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Lai received her master’s in Public Health in Epidemiology from George Washington University.

MD Anderson Cancer Center

• Clinical Assistant Professor in Department of Lymphoma / Myeloma

Chijioke Nze, M.D., MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the department of Lymphoma and Myeloma at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center and is a specialist in lymphoma care.

Dr. Nze received his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by his MD from Harvard Medical School and a Master in Public Health (MPH) in health policy from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and his hematology and Oncology fellowship at MD Anderson where he served as Hematology Chief Fellow in his final year.

He is a Principal Investigator on multiple Phase I-III clinical trials in follicular lymphoma and serves as MD Anderson’s site principle investigator for the Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes (LEO) Cohort Study.

Dr Nze’s research focuses on advancing equitable access to clinical trials and improving outcomes for underserved lymphoma patients. He leads clinical research efforts at Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) Hospital, a safety-net institution, and chairs its multidisciplinary hematologic malignancy tumor board.

He also co-leads the Blood Cancer United (formally LLS) IMPACT initiative with Dr. Christopher Flowers, expanding trial access across South Texas and developing culturally responsive engagement strategies.

His early work is supported by several career development awards including the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the Robert A. Winn Excellence in Clinical Trials Career Development Award and Calebresi K12 award. Dr. Nze’s long-term goal is to build a sustainable, community-anchored trial network that integrates patient feedback and health policy to drive inclusive innovation in lymphoma care.

Roche/Genentech

• Population Health Dashboard Analytics Lead