Jason A. Chesney, M.D., Ph.D., is the UofL Health - Brown Cancer Center director and associate vice president for health affairs at the University of Louisville. 

Dr. Chesney earned his bachelor's degree in anthropology and his Ph.D. and M.D., all from the University of Minnesota. He completed his residency in Manhattan at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College-New York Hospital. He was a clinical fellow in the division of immunology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. After joining the University of Louisville's Brown Cancer Center, he was named the Brinkley Endowed Chair in Lung Cancer Research and then the James Graham Brown Foundation Endowed Chair.   
 
Dr. Chesney has authored 102 peer-reviewed research articles and is the inventor of twelve U.S. patents for new cancer therapies. His laboratory research has resulted in two phase I clinical trials of novel cancer drugs. He is currently funded with an $11.5 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to establish the nation's first COBRE Center for Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy.   
 
In 2014, Dr. Chesney's clinical research team and a second team from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center were the top two clinical groups worldwide to find the combination of ipilimumab with another immune checkpoint inhibitor, nivolumab, was the most effective immunotherapy regimen ever developed for melanoma patients. Over the last four years, Dr. Chesney has served as the institutional principal investigator for several clinical trials of novel cellular immunotherapies, including tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, for melanoma, lung, cervical, and head and neck cancers. 
 
Active in professional organizations, Dr. Chesney is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology and recently completed a four-year commitment as a standing member of the National Cancer Institute's Tumor Cell Biology Study Section. Additionally, he has either chaired or served as a reviewer on a multitude of study sections both within the National Cancer Institute and other national research organizations.