Katharine Hsu

Katharine C. Hsu is an American hematologist, oncologist, and academic administrator who researches human natural killer cells. She has served as the director of the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program since 2021. Hsu is a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Life
Hsu earned a B.S. and M.S. from Stanford University in 1987. She earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 1993. She studied in the laboratory of Moses Chao during her doctoral studies. Her dissertation was titled, Mechanisms of TNF Receptor Action: Studies Using Chimeric Receptor Mutants. She earned a M.D. in 1994 from Weill Cornell Medicine. She conducted an internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in hematology and oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 1997 to 2002.

Hsu joined the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College where she worked as an instructor of medicine from 2003 to 2008, an assistant professor of medicine from 2008 to 2011 and as an associate professor of medicine from 2011 to 2016. In 2012, she was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation. In 2017, she became a professor of medicine. She researches 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.