The Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) Research and Treatment Program has become a landmark for CLL patients worldwide. Dr. Kanti Rai has been involved in diagnosing and treating CLL for almost 40 years and the staging system that bears his name came out of his early breakthrough research. His particular areas of interest are: natural history of CLL, improving prognostic features of this disease and developing newer strategies of therapy which are hypothesis-driven. Dr. Rai is an active member of the International Workshop on CLL (iwCLL) and Dr. Keating s Global CLL Foundation. He is an active member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Hematology (ASH). In 2006, Dr. Rai served as the President of ASH. He was the recipient of ASCO s David Karnofsky Memorial Award in 2012. In 2013, Dr. Rai was honored with the iwCLL David Galton award. In 2014 he was presented with ASH s Wallace H. Coulter Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Rai is the Joel Finkelstein Cancer Foundation Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell School of Medicine and Professor of Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY.