William Evans

William Evans General Information

Biography

Dr. William Evans served as a Board Member at Innova Memphis. Dr. Evans joined St. Jude Children's Research Hospital as a student in 1972, chaired the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department from 1986-2002, served as Scientific Director & EVP from 2002-2004, and as President and CEO of SJCRH from 2004-2014. He was the inaugural holder of the Donald Pinkel Chair of Childhood Cancer Treatment at St. Jude and previously held the First Tennessee Bank Chair of Pediatrics and Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy. Evans received his BSc and Pharm.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences (1974, 1975). He has received honorary doctoral degrees from Rhodes College, the Ohio State University, the University of Florida, and the Medical University of South Carolina. For the past 38 years, his research has focused on the pharmacogenomics of anticancer agents in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, for which he has received three consecutive NIH MERIT Awards from NCI. Dr. Evans has authored over 350 articles and numerous book chapters. He has received several national awards for his research, including the 2009 Pediatric Oncology Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (shared with Mary V. Relling of SJCRH), the 2009 Team Science Prize from American Association of Cancer Research (shared with colleagues at St. Jude), the 2012 Remington Medal from the American Pharmaceutical Association and the 2013 Hunter Award from American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He is recognized by ISI as a "Highly Cited Scientist" in pharmacology, based on citations of his research publications ranking in the top 1%. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He served on the Board of Trustees of Rhodes College (2005-2014), as a member of the Memphis Tomorrow (2010-2014), on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the US National Cancer Institute of NIH (2007-2012), and currently serves on the Board of Launch Tennessee (2008-present) and on the Board of Trustees of the University of Tennessee (2014-present). During his ten year tenure as SJCRH CEO, St. Jude has been ranked annually in the top 10 best places to work in academia by The Scientist magazine (#1 in 2006), ranked #1 children's cancer hospital by Parents Magazine and US News and World Report, and listed by Fortune magazine among the top 100 companies to work for in the US (annually since 2011). St. Jude is the only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center devoted solely to children, and received the highest designation of "exceptional" from NCI in 2013.