Dr. Kathleen Burns, Chair of Pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is a distinguished lifetime honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
Burns is recognized within Medical Sciences for pioneering contributions to understanding the role that mobile genetic elements play in human disease, most notably cancers.
Burns is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, as well as a senior hematopathologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The Burns Lab studies repetitive DNAs and the biology of the transposons or "jumping genes," that give rise to these repeats. They study how these genetic sequences contribute to diseases, including causing mutations and impacting cell biology in cancers, and how to leverage this understanding to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Burns received her MD and PhD degrees from Baylor College of Medicine, completed a pathology residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, joined the Johns Hopkins faculty, and was promoted to become a Professor of Pathology, Oncology, and Genetics before joining Dana-Farber in 2020. She is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of University Pathologists, and the Interurban Clinical Club. Her honors include a Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Scriver Family Visiting Professorship in Genetic Medicine at McGill University, the Daria Haust Lecturer of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen's University, the Thomas M. Wheeler Lecturer at Baylor College of Medicine, and the Peacock Memorial Lecturer at University of Texas Southwestern.
This year Burns is among nearly 500 scientists, engineers, and innovators elected across 24 AAAS disciplinary sections. She joins more than 20 Dana-Farber researchers who have received this lifetime honor - an AAAS distinction that dates to 1874.
This year's AAAS Fellows will be celebrated at the annual Fellows Forum in Washington, D.C., on May 29, 2026.
