Dr. Burkard is Professor of Medicine and Oncology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He also serves as UW Carbone Cancer Center Associate Director for Genomics and Precision Medicine, and as co-director of the UW Medical Scientist Training Program. He completed his MD and PhD in Chemistry at the University of Rochester and residency in Internal Medicine at Cornell/New York Hospital. During fellowship in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer, he trained with Dr. Prasad Jallepalli on mechanisms of cell division. Since joining the University of Wisconsin in 2008, his group has investigated the signals that regulate human cell division using chemical genetics. Additionally, he has investigated the mechanisms of aberrant cell division in breast cancer. His group has made several key discoveries. First, certain types of cell-division failures can be recovered by interphase division, demonstrating an unanticipated mechanism of preserving the genome. Second, he identified kinase signals on mitotic chromatin that are required to retain its integrity. In collaboration with his colleague, Dr. Beth Weaver, he is developing quantitative measures of chromosomal instability as a predictive biomarker for cancer therapy.