Kornelia Polyak

Kornelia Polyak is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized breast cancer expert.^[1]

Kornelia Polyak
Alma mater	Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Medical University Cornell University
Scientific career
Institutions	Harvard Medical School/Dana–Farber Cancer Institute

Polyak earned her MD from Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Medical University in Szeged, Hungary, and her PhD from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences/Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She then did a fellowship in cancer genetics at Johns Hopkins Oncology Center with Bert Vogelstein and Kenneth Kinzler.^[2]

In 1998, Polyak joined the faculty of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute.^[2] Her research focuses on breast tumor evolution.^[3] Her research is funded in part by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.^[4]

From 2010 to 2013, she served on the American Association for Cancer Research Board of Directors,^[2] and from 2015 to 2019, she was a member of the AACR Women in Cancer Research council.^[2]

Awards

• 2007 AACR 27th Annual Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research
• 2008 Elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation^[5]
• 2011 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research
• 2012 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research
• 2015 Outstanding Investigator Award, National Cancer Institute
• 2016 Rosalind Franklin Award
• 2019 AAAS Fellow
• 2020 Fellows of the AACR Academy
• 2020 Distinguished Alumna Award, Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences
• 2022 National Academy of Sciences
• 2022 National Academy of Medicine
• 2022 American Cancer Society Research Professor