Zachary Morris MD, PhD

Zachary Morris, MD/PhD, is a professor and chair of the Department of Human Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He completed undergraduate studies at Ripon College and two Master's Degrees as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He subsequently obtained his MD and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Hawaii and a residency in Radiation Oncology at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Morris joined the faculty at UWSMPH in 2016 as a physician-scientist in the Department of Human Oncology. Clinically, he specializes in the treatment of patients with melanoma and sarcomas, with a secondary focus on prostate and head and neck cancers. His translational research laboratory examines the mechanisms and pre-clinical testing of treatment approaches that combine radiation and immunotherapies to drive anti-tumor immune responses, with a particular focus on radiopharmaceuticals and theranostic agents. He was a 2017 recipient of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award and is co-PI on an NIH Cancer Moonshot Initiative U01 grant that was funded as part of the Immune-Oncology Translational Network.

More recently, Dr. Morris co-led a UW team in the successful application for an NIH P01 program project grant that focuses on the interaction between targeted radionuclide therapies and immunotherapeutics. Dr. Morris serves as PI for multiple clinical trials and is the director of a UWSMPH course that he initiated on tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy. Since 2018, Dr. Morris has served as Vice-Chair in the Department of Human Oncology. Dr. Morris currently serves as chair for the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium’s Sarcoma Clinical Trials Working Group and the NIH Radiation-Immunotherapy Working Group. Dr. Morris also currently serves as a Major in the 115th Fighter Wing of the Wisconsin Air National Guard.