Lindsay McOmber Morton is an American cancer epidemiologist who researches

genetic susceptibility Public health genomics is the use of genomics information to benefit public health. This is visualized as more effective preventive care and disease treatments with better specificity, tailored to the genetic makeup of each patient. According to ...

to second cancers. She is the Director of the radiation epidemiology branch and head of its cancer survivorship research unit at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Life

Morton received a B.A. from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

. Thomas B. Roos mentored and introduced Morton to epidemiology during her undergraduate studies. She earned a Ph.D. in epidemiology from

Yale School of Public Health The Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) was founded in 1915 by Charles-Edward Amory Winslow and is one of the oldest public health masters programs in the United States. It is consistently rated among the best schools of public health in the cou ...

with a focus on

cancer epidemiology The epidemiology of cancer is the study of the factors affecting cancer, as a way to infer possible trends and causes. The study of cancer epidemiology uses epidemiological methods to find the cause of cancer and to identify and develop improve ...

. Her 2004 dissertation was titled, ''An epidemiologic investigation of the roles of alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking in the etiology of non-Hodgkin-lymphoma''. Tongzhang Zheng was her doctoral advisor. Patricia Hartge of the

(NCI) was Morton's primary advisor during her final year of her dissertation. She joined the NCI division of cancer epidemiology and genetics (DCEG) in 2004 as a postdoctoral fellow with a concentration in molecular epidemiology. During her doctoral and postdoctoral training, she focused her research on understanding the causes of lymphoid neoplasms. In 2008, Morton joined the radiation epidemiology branch (REB) as a tenure-track investigator. She expanded her research to the study of multiple primary cancers, evaluating the carcinogenic effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as well as other environmental and genetic risk factors for second cancers. In 2015, Morton was awarded scientific tenure by

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH) and became a senior investigator. She was promoted to deputy chief of the REB in 2020 and became head of the cancer survivorship research unit within REB in 2021. Morton became the Director of REB in 2022. She is an elected member of the

American Epidemiological Society The American Epidemiological Society is an American honorary society dedicated to epidemiology. It was established in 1927, and has held annual meetings since 1968. It is the oldest epidemiology organization in the United States. Past members of the ...

. She researches identify genetic variants associated with the development of second cancers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, Lindsay Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Dartmouth College alumni Yale School of Public Health alumni National Institutes of Health people 21st-century American women scientists American women epidemiologists American epidemiologists Cancer epidemiologists Members of the American Epidemiological Society