Elaine Mardis

Elaine R. Mardis (born September 28, 1962) is the co-executive director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital, where she also serves as the Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine. She also is professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Mardis's research focuses on the genomic characterization of cancer and its implications for cancer medicine. She was part of the team that reported the first next-generation-based sequencing of a whole cancer genome, and participated extensively in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP).

Biography Mardis was born in North Platte, Nebraska. She gained a passion for science at an early age, and credits her father, a chemistry professor for more than 30 years, for nurturing this passion.

She received her undergraduate degree in Zoology from the University of Oklahoma in 1984. and was instrumental in establishing the utility of massively parallel sequencing technologies for understanding cancer biology. breast cancer, glioblastoma, and lung adenocarcinoma. By better defining the landscape of germline and somatic alterations, this research helps drive new strategies for treating cancer, and is central to the concept of precision medicine.

Since joining Nationwide Children's Hospital in 2016, Mardis research has incorporated next-generation sequencing assays and established knowledge about cancer genomics into clinical and therapeutic decision-making, and into the design of new approaches to cancer immunotherapy.

In 2015, Mardis helped launch an open access, precision medicine journal, Molecular Case Studies, in conjunction with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief. In 2020 she was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Disease Models & Mechanisms journal, with Elizabeth Patton the Editor-in-Chief. She has co-authored more than 250 articles in many prestigious publications, such as Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Blood and Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Mardis was elected as president of the American Association for Cancer Research for 2019–2020.

Awards and honors 2010: Scripps Translational Research Award 2016: Morton K. Schwartz Award for Significant Contributions in Cancer Research Diagnostics from the American Association for Clinical Chemistry 2017: Precision Medicine World Congress 2017 Luminary Award 2019: Elected to the 2019 class of Fellows of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Academy