Susan O’Brien

Susan O’Brien, MD, is the retired Associate Medical Director of the UC Irvine Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Irvine, US, as well as Medical Director of the Sue and Ralph Stern Center for Clinical Trials and Research. She is currently a Professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UC Irvine. She received her medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences), where she also completed her internal medicine residency. She subsequently completed her oncology fellowship at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX, US, and joined the faculty upon completion. When she left MD Anderson in 2015, she was the Ashbel Smith Professor of Medicine in the Department of Leukemia. 

Dr O’Brien has authored more than 900 peer-reviewed manuscripts and delivered more than 500 lectures at national and international conferences and academic institutions. She is recognized as a leading leukemia expert worldwide (expertscape.com) with an h-index of 170. She is listed among the top 1% of the most highly cited and influential researchers in the world. Her research is credited for many and sustained contributions to the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Year after year, she is ranked nationally at the top in her field by America's Top Doctors, Super Doctors, and America's Top Doctors for Cancer. 

Dr O’Brien is a board member of the CLL Society and The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research. In 2020, she received the Giants of Cancer Care Award for Leukemia, and in 2023, she received the Rai-Binet Medal from the International Workshop on CLL.