Elizabeth R. Lawlor, MD, PhD

Professor of Pediatrics
University of Washington

Associate Director for Cancer Biology
Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research

Seattle Children's Research Institute
Seattle, WA

Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) R. Lawlor completed her undergraduate and MD degrees at McMaster University, Canada, and clinical training in pediatrics and pediatric hematology-oncology & bone marrow transplantation at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital, respectively. Following her clinical training Dr. Lawlor completed a PhD in Pathology & Lab Medicine at the University of British Columbia and a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. She joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California as an assistant professor in 2004 and in 2010 moved to University of Michigan where she rose through the ranks to tenured professor. While at Michigan, Dr. Lawlor served as program director for the interdepartmental PhD program in Cancer Biology and as associate director for education and training at the Rogel Cancer Center. As a dual-trained MD and PhD physician-scientist, Dr. Lawlor is committed to educating the next generation of cancer scientists and she is passionate about creating a diverse and inclusive workforce who will together advance pediatric oncology research and care.

In 2020, Dr. Lawlor was recruited to Seattle where she is a professor of pediatrics and adjunct professor of pathology at the University of Washington and the associate director of cancer biology at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Dr. Lawlor is also an affiliate member of the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) and associate program leader for Cancer Basic Biology in the UW/FHCRC/SCH NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Consortium. Dr. Lawlor’s research laboratory is focused on basic and translational biology of pediatric solid tumors, in particular Ewing sarcoma. The overall goal of the Lawlor lab is to discover and define differences between normal developmental and cancer biology that will enable discovery of targeted therapeutics that are less toxic to growing children.

Elizabeth R. Lawlor, MD, PhD