Dr. Veena N. Rao is Professor and Co-Director of the Cancer Biology Program, GCC Distinguished Cancer Scholar, Department of OB/GYN at Morehouse School of Medicine. She completed her PhD work at the CCMB and received her Ph.D. from Osmania University, India. Some of her Ph.D. work was done at Max Planck Institute in Germany, University of Edinburgh, Scotland and MIT, Boston. Her postdoctoral work was completed at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University under the mentorship of Professor Weisman. She was a Forgarty International fellow at the Molecular Oncology lab of late Dr. Papas at NCI where she and her collaborator Dr. Reddy identified the ERG gene which is involved in prostate cancers. She served as Assistant Professor at Temple University and Associate Professor at Jefferson Medical College where she identified and cloned the ELK-1 gene and BRCA1 isoforms. She has been working in the BRCA1 field from the time it was discovered and has several patents.
