Anne Marie Lennon, a physician and researcher in the early detection of pancreatic cancer, will be the next chair and first woman to lead the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine and chair of medicine at UPMC, beginning March 1, 2024.

She also will continue as a gastroenterologist caring for patients and focusing on early cancer detection and prevention.

As the largest department in the school, medicine has more than 1,000 faculty members and combined clinical and research revenues of nearly $600 million.

Lennon is currently the Moses and Helen Golden Paulson Professor of Gastroenterology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with joint appointments as a professor in medicine, surgery, radiology and oncology. She is an internationally recognized expert in the management of precancerous pancreatic lesions,

Lennon earned her medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and her Ph.D. from University College Dublin. She completed her internal medicine residency at Cleveland Clinic and at Mater Misericordiae Hospital and Wexford General Hospital in Ireland, followed by a fellowship in gastroenterology in Edinburgh, Scotland, and an advanced endoscopy fellowship at Johns Hopkins. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2010 and has directed its Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology since 2020.

Lennon has served on the governing board of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and co-chaired its Women’s Task Force.

She succeeds Mark T. Gladwin, who left Pitt in 2022 to become dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at the University of Maryland–Baltimore. Lennon takes over from interim chair Mark W. Geraci, associate vice chancellor for interdisciplinary research and professor of medicine.