Dalsu Baris Returns to Clinical Medicine

April 7, 2015, by DCEG Staff

Dalsu Baris, M.D., Ph.D., staff scientist in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), retired from federal service in February 2015, to pursue a medical residency in the field of geriatric psychiatry.

Dr. Baris conducted important research related to the epidemiology of multiple myeloma, bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Her investigations of myeloma were comprehensive and led to her appointment to the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF). In 2006, she received an award for her efforts as part of an international team that developed IMF’s Bank on a Cure© DNA biobanking project.

Dr. Baris managed NCI’s New England Bladder Cancer Study, a multidisciplinary study in collaboration with Dartmouth Medical School, the departments of health in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, and the USGS, to evaluate the 50-year elevated risk of this malignancy in this region. She, along with OEEB Chief Debra Silverman, Sc.D., and others, reported on increased bladder cancer risk with tobacco use, occupational exposures, water contaminants, hair dyes, and genetic susceptibility.

She developed important methods to study the effect of chemotherapy on blood levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, which has caused researchers around the world to strive to get pre-treatment blood samples when assessing the effect of these compounds on NHL etiology.

Among her achievements in her decades of service in DCEG, Dr. Baris received many awards, including an Honorable Mention Alice Hamilton Award in the category of Epidemiology and Surveillance from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for her work on a study of firefighters.