Daniela Matei, M.D. is a Diana Princess of Wales Professor in Cancer Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the co-Leader of the Translational Research is Solid Tumors Program in the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is a physician scientist well-known in the field of ovarian cancer. Dr. Matei earned her M.D. from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila” in Bucharest, Romania and completed post graduate training at SUNY at Stony Brook and at UCLA. She was a Professor at Indiana University in the Division of Hematology Oncology and served as the Co-leader of the Experimental and Developmental Therapeutics Program of the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center since 2007. Dr. Matei’s research has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute, the US Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department of Defense, the American Cancer Society, the V Foundation, and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
Dr. Matei’s laboratory studies mechanisms of ovarian cancer metastasis and novel therapeutics for ovarian cancer. The general theme is translation between bench and clinic; with laboratory research forming the foundation of clinical experiments. She is also engaged in clinical research and serves as the principal investigator and/or co-investigator on many clinical trials testing novel therapies for ovarian cancer, including several cooperative group and National Cancer Institute–sponsored trials for gynecologic cancer.