Dr. Lakshmi Nayak currently serves as Director of the Center for Central Nervous System (CNS) Lymphoma at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India. She completed her residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital/ Cornell campus, and fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Her research includes development of novel therapies through preclinical and clinical studies for management of brain tumors including primary CNS lymphoma. She has developed several phase I and II trials using combination of molecular targeted agents and immunotherapies including checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T cells for treatment of CNS lymphomas. She leads the international neurologic assessment in neuro-oncology (NANO) effort in collaboration with key leaders in neuro-oncology which led to the development of a standardized outcome-assessment scale to objectively evaluate neurologic function in patients with brain tumors.