Joan Levy, PhD
Chief Science Officer
Joan Levy, PhD, serves as the Chief Science Officer for the Melanoma Research Alliance. In this role she works with MRA’s scientific team and leadership to set the scientific vision for the organization, and oversees all aspects of MRA's Research Program – including grants, the RARE Registry, and special projects. Joan has more than 30 years of experience in oncology research in academic, pharmaceutical, and disease foundation settings.
Prior to joining MRA, Joan was Director of Research at the Chordoma Foundation and provided oversight of research activities, in particular focusing on programs involving identification of new therapeutic targets, further development of the Foundation's Drug Screening Program, and advancement of new drugs and combination approaches into the clinic. For ten years Joan also led a variety of research programs at the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation ranging from spearheading different grant programs to working closely with their affiliate consortium on large genomics projects, registries and coordinating early clinical trials between consortium sites and industry partners. Before her work at the different oncology foundations, Joan coordinated an oncology pipeline of early drug discovery projects at Bayer Pharmaceuticals.
Joan received her BS in Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Vermont College of Medicine. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships in oncology research focusing on oncogenes and signal transduction pathways at the Rockefeller University and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
