Dr. Rafael Bejar is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center where he directs the Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) Center of Excellence. In addition to caring for patients, Dr. Bejar conducts laboratory research exploring the clinical impact of genetic mutations and epigenetic alterations observed in MDS. As of January 2020, Dr. Bejar has taken a partial leave to serve as the Chief Medical Officer for Aptose Biosciences, a pharmaceutical company developing drugs to treat hematologic malignancies. Dr. Bejar is a graduate of the UC San Diego School of Medicine Medical Scientist Training Program, the Brigham and Women’s Internal Medicine Residency program, and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center fellowship in hematology and oncology. He is a prior American Society of Hematology Scholar and has served on the NCCN Guidelines Committee for MDS. He is a member of the International Working Group for MDS Molecular Prognosis Committee and the WHO Classification Committee. He is on the steering committee for the National MDS Study and serves on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of the MDS Foundation.