Background
Dr. Paul Ness is a professor of pathology, medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His area of clinical expertise includes transfusion support of hematology and oncology patients, autoimmune hematologic disorders, and massive transfusion protocols. Dr. Ness served as the director of the Division of Transfusion Medicine and program director of the Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine Fellowship Program in the Department of Pathology for 38 years before relinquishing these responsibilities in 2017.
Dr. Ness has an extensive background in clinical transfusion medicine and research activities related to blood safety. He was a co-investigator with Dr. Kenrad Nelson on the FACTS study, which followed cardiac surgery patients to determine their risk of seroconversion to viral agents such as HIV and hepatitis. He is a consultant on the REDS III program for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Along with Dr. Hua Shan, he is PI of the China project for the international REDS III program. He has also conducted a major study documenting the risk of bacterial contamination of platelets, and was the PI for the Johns Hopkins site in the NHLBI Transfusion Medicine Hemostasis Clinical Trial Network.
He has extensive experience in blood safety education programs internationally. He has worked with Drs. Shan and Nelson to teach blood safety in China, India and Laos/Thailand through the Hopkins Fogarty program. Additionally, he has had extensive teaching roles in Vietnam, India, Egypt and Africa.
Dr. Ness received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his M.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed his residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and performed a fellowship in oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.
His research interests include transfusion medicine, immune hemolysis and transfusion alternatives.
He was editor of Transfusion for 15 years and a past president of the American Association of Blood Banks.