Katherine Ruffner, MD ’83

Katherine Ruffner attended Duke University for her undergraduate education, receiving her bachelor’s degree in biology. Following laboratory technician positions with Emory University and Harvard Medical School, she elected to return to school, earning her MD at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. While in medical school, she spent two summers in Paris, working in the bone marrow transplant program at the Hôpital St-Louis, which established her interest in hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Her studies continued with an internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan, during which she met her husband, and a medical oncology fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at the University of Washington, where she received a K23 training grant from the National Cancer Institute. Katherine and her husband returned to Tennessee shortly thereafter, and she began a position as a bone marrow transplant physician at Vanderbilt. Today, Katherine is president and principal at Gryphon Oncology, LLC, a consultancy in the field of oncology drug development for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and enjoys knitting and traveling the areas with active knitting communities.