Katharine Hsu

Katharine Chia-Rae Hsu
Alma mater	Stanford University (BS, MS) Cornell University (PhD, MD)
Known for	Director of Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program since 2021
Scientific career
Fields	Hematology, oncology
Institutions	Cornell University
Thesis	Mechanisms of TNF receptor action: Studies using chimeric receptor mutants (1993)
Doctoral advisor	Moses Chao

Katharine Chia-Rae Hsu is an American physician-scientist with a field of research in human natural killer cells. A professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, she has served as the director of the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program since April 2021.

Early life and education

Hsu lived in Tuxedo Park, New York for fifteen years. Hsu received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science from Stanford University in 1987. She received a Doctor of Philosophy in cell biology in 1993 and a Doctor of Medicine in 1994, both from Cornell University.

During her doctoral studies at Cornell University, she studied at the laboratory of Moses Chao, who was her doctoral advisor. Her doctoral dissertation was titled, Mechanisms of TNF receptor action: Studies using chimeric receptor mutants.

Hsu completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in 1997. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in hematology and oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in 2002.

Career

Hsu joined the faculty of Cornell Medical College. She worked as an instructor of medicine from 2003 to 2008, as an assistant professor of medicine from 2008 to 2011 and as an associate professor of medicine from 2011 to 2016. She was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2012. She became a professor of medicine in 2017. Her field of research is natural killer cells in humans and their role in killing cancer cells and cells with viruses.

In April 2021, Hsu was named the director of the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program, succeeding Olaf Sparre Andersen.