Johanna Joyce is a Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Member of the international Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Previously, she was a Member, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York.

The Joyce lab investigates the microenvironment in which a tumor arises and the critical influence that non-cancerous immune and stromal cells can have on tumor progression, metastasis and therapeutic response. They have uncovered critical regulatory signals provided by the normal tissue stroma and immune cells to the cancer cells, and determined how these normal cells can be modified by the cancer cells to produce a plethora of factors that enhance tumor malignancy. A major focus of her lab’s recent research has been to deeply and comprehensively interrogate the immune landscape of brain tumors, and then use this gained knowledge to develop novel strategies to therapeutically target the tumor microenvironment.

Johanna has been recognized for her contributions to cancer research through a series of awards including the EACR-Pezcoller Award for Women in Cancer Research, Robert Bing Prize, Cloetta Prize, Metastasis Research Society Innovation Award, Swiss Bridge Award, American Cancer Society Scholar Award, Rita Allen Foundation Award, V Foundation Award, Sidney Kimmel Foundation Award, among many others. In 2017, she was elected as a Member of EMBO and a Fellow of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, in 2020 she was elected to the Women in Cancer Research Council of the AACR, and in 2024 she was elected to the prestigious Fellows of the AACR Academy.

Johanna currently serves on the advisory boards of the IRB Institute, Barcelona, Spain; the Robert Bosch Center for Tumor Diseases, Stuttgart, Germany; the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona, Switzerland; and on the editorial boards of Cancer Cell, Cancer Discovery, and Trends in Cancer. Johanna is a committed mentor and advisor to many young researchers and a widely-recognized advocate – in particular for women in cancer research.