Jonathan D. Licht, M.D., has served as director of the University of Florida Health Cancer Center since late 2015, holding the Marshall E. Rinker, Sr. Chair. Previously, Dr. Licht was professor and chief of hematology/oncology at Northwestern University. Earlier in his career, he was professor and chief of hematology/oncology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Licht led the UF Health Cancer Center to achieve designation from the National Cancer Institute in June 2023. A graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he completed his internal medicine residency and medical oncology fellowship at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. 

Dr. Licht’s laboratory studies aberrant gene regulation as a cause of blood and other cancers and is developing treatment strategies to reverse abnormal, cancer-causing gene functions. Dr. Licht’s cancer career spans nearly three decades, and his research program is distinguished by over 30 years of continuous NCI and national foundation funding. Dr. Licht leads a Specialized Center of Research program from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He is principal investigator of three NCI R01 grants. He has trained over a dozen Ph.D. and M.D.-Ph.D. students and more than 30 postdoctoral fellows who have gone on to positions in academia and industry. He has recruited and mentored numerous clinical and basic research faculty members. In recognition of his mentorship skills, he received the 2021 American Society of Hematology Basic Sciences Mentor Award. He has authored more than 220 original articles, reviews and book chapters, and his work has been cited more than 32,000 times. He is an associate editor of Oncogene and serves on the Editorial Boards of Cancer Blood Discovery, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and Clinical Epigenetics.

Dr. Licht has served in key positions in the American Society of Hematology (councilor, co-director of the ASH/European Hematology Association Translational Training in Hematology), the American Association for Cancer Research (chair, Taskforce of Hematological Malignancies), and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (vice chair, Medical Scientific Board). He has chaired the review panel for Specialized Center grants of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, served two years as chair of the Biochemical of the Mechanisms of Cancer Therapy-I study section of NIH and led the 2019 Gordon Conference on Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics.