Lisa H. Butterfield, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Scientist in Discovery-Oncology at Merck, in South San Francisco. Her focus at Merck is individualized neoantigen therapies and immuno-oncology. She was formerly the Vice President, Research and Development at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), and an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, University California San Francisco. At PICI, she supported cell therapy initiatives and clinical trial biospecimen and biomarker projects. Her academic research has been focused on cancer vaccines and cellular therapies for melanoma, hepatocellular cancer and other tumor types. Dr. Butterfield was previously Professor of Medicine, Surgery, Immunology and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh (2003-2018) and Director of the Hillman Cancer Center Immunologic Monitoring and Cellular Products Laboratory. She has been a PI, co-PI an IND Sponsor for 7 cancer vaccine trials treating >100 patients. She has a PhD in Biology from UCLA, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Cellular Immunology and Cancer Gene Therapy also at UCLA. She was the first female President of the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC, 2017-2018) and a member of the SITC Executive Committee (2015-2020) who was awarded the Visionary Legacy award from SITC in 2020. She led the Immunology Reference Lab for the ECOG-ACRIN NCI cooperative group (2006-2018) and collaborated on biomarker studies in many clinical trials. She has published over 195 peer-reviewed manuscripts, reviews and book chapters, and mentored over 20 students and postdocs. She co-leads the SITC Women's Leadership Institute and is a co-Editor of the SITC textbook "Cancer Immunotherapy: Principles and Practice" 1st and 2nd editions. Dr. Butterfield was recently elected a 2025 Distinguished Fellow of American Association of Immunologists (DFAAI).