After serving as director of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1997 to July 2003, Dr. Clara Bloomfield became senior advisor to the Ohio State cancer program and the charter member of the Ohio State Cancer Scholars Program, which is designed to help recruit and retain senior cancer investigators of international stature.

She was renowned for her more than three decades of research in adult leukemia and lymphoma – research that has been described in more than 600 publications and has helped change standards of treatment. She earned her MD from the University of Chicago and completed training in internal medicine and medical oncology at the University of Minnesota, where she became a full professor in seven years. In 1989, she became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Oncology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, as well as chair of the Division of Medicine at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

She came to Ohio State in 1997, and in 2000, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. At the OSUCCC – James, she served as cancer scholar and senior adviser. She was also a member of the Cancer Biology Program, a professor of internal medicine and holder of the William Greenville Pace III Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.