Shelia Hoar Zahm

Shelia Hoar Zahm is an American cancer epidemiologist specialized in pesticides and cancer, the etiology of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and occupational cancer among women. She was deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's division of cancer epidemiology and genetics from 1998 to 2011.

Life Zahm completed a S.M. (1977) and Sc.D. (1980) in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. During the mid-1980s into the 1990s, her supervisor, Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr. allowed Zahm, and her colleagues Debra T. Silverman and Patricia Hartge to all work part-time so they could raise families. She was tenured in 1987 in the Occupational Studies Section, became Deputy Chief of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch in 1996, and served as Deputy Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) from 1998 to 2011.