Stacey E. Ban, MD
3rd Year Fellow

Stacey received her B.S. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she majored in Biology and first developed an interest in medicine. She earned her M.D. from Rush Medical College, where she also completed her Internal Medicine internship and residency. Her interests are primarily solid tumors, particularly breast, colon, lung, and pancreatic cancers. She has had an abstract published at the 2004 ASH meeting in CLL, and is currently developing and collecting data for project on metastatic breast cancer.

Melissa L. Larson, MD
3rd Year Fellow

Melissa received her B.S. degree from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois where she majored in chemistry and minored in French. She received her M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Rush University Medical Center. During her fellowship, she has helped develop a treatment protocol for recurrent ovarian cancer with Dr. Usha. She has also authored a case report on HIV-associated lymphoma, an abstract on ZAP-70 expression in CLL, and a retrospective review on treatment of patients with post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder. She now plans on developing new protocols for AML and ALL with Dr. Venugopal.

Mary Jo Fidler, MD
2nd Year Fellow

Dr. Fidler attended Cornell University in Ithaca , New York for undergraduate work. She received her medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx , New York and then went on to complete her internal medicine residency at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University in Chicago . She is Past-Chair of the Illinois State Medical Society Resident and Fellow Section and currently sits on the Society's Board of Trustees. She acts as the liaison to the Rush Housestaff Association for the ISMS. At Rush Dr. Fidler is currently working on a project correlating molecular markers and gene expression with clinical outcomes in lung cancer .

Rekha R. Harting, MD
2nd Year Fellow

Rekha received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where she majored in Biology. She received her medical degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago. She completed her internship, residency and a year as Chief Resident at Rush University Medical Center. She is currently a second year fellow.

Marta Batus, MD
1st Year Fellow

Marta received her B.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she majored in Cell and Structural Biology and minored in Chemistry. She received her M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Rush University Medical Center, and is very enthusiastic about starting her fellowship in Hematology and Oncology. She has been involved in research about metastatic breast cancer since second year of her residency.

Mohamad Kassar, MD
1st Year Fellow

Mohamad received his medical degree with honors from the Faculty of Medicine-University of Damascus in 1999. His postgraduate training included an internship and residency in internal medicine at The Hospital of Saint Raphael, affiliated with Yale School of Medicine. He has worked on a phase II clinical trial focusing on advanced Head and Neck Cancer. The results of this trial were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, along with a case study published in the American Journal of Oncology Review. In the ASCO meeting held in Orlando, Florida in May/2005, Mohamad presented an abstract focusing on new biomarker over expression detected by in-situ proteomic analysis in patients with advanced ovarian cancer. He is currently a first year Fellow in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the Rush University Medical Center.