Featured Lectures

 

Monday, August 17
5:15-5:45 pm EDT
SSO Presidential Address
"Surgical Oncology Moonshot"
David L. Bartlett, MD
System Chair
Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute
Pittsburgh, PA 

 

Monday, August 17
5:45-6:15 pm EDT
James Ewing Lecture
"Crisis Leadership: Leading A Comprehensive Cancer Center Through the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Peter WT Pisters, MD, MHCM
President
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX

 

Tuesday, August 18
5-5:30 pm EDT
John Wayne Clinical Research Lecture
“Building Collaborations to Create a Learning Health System”
Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD
Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, Harvard Medical School
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, MA

  

Tuesday, August 18
5:30-6 pm EDT
American Cancer Society/SSO Basic Science Lecture
"Oncolytic Viruses: Multifaceted Cancer Therapeutics"
John C. Bell, PhD 
Senior Scientist, Centre for Innovative Cancer Research, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON, Canada 

 

Featured Lecturers' Bios

 

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Peter WT Pisters, MD, MHCM President The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX

Dr. Pisters is president of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he previously served in faculty and leadership positions for more than 20 years. His appointment to the presidential post, effective December 1, 2017, followed an international search and a unanimous naming as sole finalist by The University of Texas System Board of Regents.

Renowned as a cancer surgeon, researcher, professor and hospital administrator, Dr. Pisters earned his medical degree at The Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He completed his master’s degree in health care administration at Harvard University School of Public Health and did his postgraduate work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he was chief administrative fellow. He earned designation as a Certified Physician Executive in 2014 and was named a fellow of both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the American College of Surgeons.

Most recently, Dr. Pisters led more than 14,000 employees and 1,700 physicians as president and chief executive officer of the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, Canada. UHN is Canada’s largest academic medical center. Affiliated with the University of Toronto, which recently ranked as the 12th most outstanding academic institution in the world, UHN has a $400 million research enterprise. It advances studies in cardiology, transplantation, neurosciences, oncology, surgical innovation, infectious diseases, genomic medicine and rehabilitation medicine. In Toronto, Dr. Pisters also served as president and chief executive officer of The Michener Institute of Education and as a professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto.

Originally arriving at MD Anderson in 1994 from a surgery instructor position at Memorial Sloan Kettering, he joined the faculty as assistant professor of Surgery. He rose to full professor with tenure in 2004 and was repeatedly honored during his two decades at MD Anderson, earning two Fellows Outstanding Teacher awards and three Faculty Excellence awards. Dr. Pisters became medical director and eventually vice president for MD Anderson’s regional care system, comprising multiple Houston-area locations. He previously served as clinical consultant for the Center for Global Oncology (now MD Anderson Cancer Network®), section chief for Sarcoma Surgery and assistant medical director of the Sarcoma Center. He specialized in helping patients with sarcomas and gastrointestinal (GI) cancers and remains a board-certified surgeon.

Dr. Pisters is a member of more than two dozen national organizations and currently serves or has served in leadership positions on the advisory boards of numerous others, including several for the National Cancer Institute. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Surgery and serves as a reviewer for multiple others. His own research, focused on sarcomas, GI cancers and other malignancies, has resulted in nearly 400 peer-reviewed and additional articles, book chapters, teaching aids and other publications.  

 

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Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, Harvard Medical School Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Boston, MA

Dr. Monica Bertagnolli is the Richard Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Surgical Oncology at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Surgeon at Dana Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC).  She previously served as the Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology from 2007-2018.  She is a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer and Sarcoma Disease Centers at DF/BWCC, where she collaborates with colleagues in medical oncology, radiation oncology, and pathology to treat cancer patients in a tertiary care setting. Additionally, Dr. Bertagnolli was elected as the President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is currently serving her term until June 2019.

Dr. Bertagnolli graduated from Princeton University and attended medical school at the University of Utah.  She trained in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a research fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  Dr. Bertagnolli’s laboratory work focuses on understanding the role of the inflammatory response in epithelial tumor formation.  From 1994-2011, she led gastrointestinal correlative science initiatives within the NCI-funded Cancer Cooperative Groups, where she facilitated integration of tumor-specific molecular markers of treatment outcome into nation-wide clinical cancer treatment protocols.  Dr. Bertagnolli has held numerous leadership roles in multi-institutional cancer clinical research consortia and currently serves as the Group Chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a new NCI-funded clinical trials group formed in 2011 by the merger of Cancer and Leukemia Group B, the North Central Cancer Treatment Group, and the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group.  She is also the Chief Executive Officer of Alliance Foundation Trials, LLC, a not-for-profit corporation that conducts international cancer clinical trials. 

  

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David L. Bartlett, MD System Chair Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute Pittsburgh, PA

Dr. David Bartlett is chair of the AHN Cancer Institute. An internationally recognized cancer surgeon, he is a pioneer in abdominal cancer treatment and a dedicated, prolific researcher. He is also past president of the Society of Surgical Oncology. He served as a senior investigator in the surgery division of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute, where he developed innovative surgical techniques to treat patients with abdominal and liver cancers and performed cutting-edge laboratory research in viral based immune therapies. Dr. Bartlett received his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and completed his surgical residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He continued his training with a Fellowship in surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He completed research fellowships at M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Board-certified by the American Board of Surgeons, Dr. Bartlett holds membership in several professional surgical and oncology societies. He received many academic honors during his career and has been chosen as one of Pittsburgh’s Best Doctors every year since 2006. He has published over 300 research papers in medical journals and has contributed chapters to more than 40 publications. In addition, he lectures widely at national and international meetings and conferences.

 

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John C. Bell, PhD Senior Scientist, Centre for Innovative Cancer Research, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada

 

Dr. John Bell received his PhD from McMaster University in 1982. The three years that followed, he trained as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa and then at the Medical Research Council in London, England. Dr. Bell began his independent research career at McGill University in 1986 and moved to the University of Ottawa, Department of Medicine, in 1989. He is a member of the Center for Cancer Therapeutics at The Ottawa Hospital Cancer Center, a Senior Scientist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He heads the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium, a Terry Fox funded group from across Canada that is developing virus-based cancer therapeutics and is the Director of the Biotherapeutics Program for the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He is the Scientific Director of the National Centre of Excellence for the development of Biotherapeutics for Cancer Therapy and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.