As the consummate physician-scientist with sustained and impactful basic science research in human genetics, my laboratory mapped the tumor suppressor locus on the short arm of chromosome 9 (9p) which is implicated in Familial Melanoma and my team was the first to show that the putative tumor suppressor gene on 9p was likely to play a more general role in cancer. This finding led to the identification of the p16/CDKN2A and MTAP genes. In The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) this locus is now recognized as one of the most highly mutated by deletion or methylation in all types of human cancers. Most importantly, the critical role of the interferon genes cluster on 9p21 and the metabolic programming of MTAP deficient cell lines opened new areas of research that target the tumor microenvironment. Cancer Immunotherapy has transformed treatment outcomes for patients with previously incurable aggressive breast cancers.  I established the first comprehensive cancer risk assessment and prevention clinic on the South Side of Chicago in 1992 and participated as a beta test site for BRCAnalysis, the first commercially available test for inherited breast cancers. I published the first report on extended African American families with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and extended our work to West Africa, the founder population of a large proportion of women of African ancestry in the US.