- Brian O’Sullivan
- Hisham Mehanna
- Christian Simon
- Neil Gross
- Cesare Piazza
- Lisette van der Molen
- Elisabeth Sjogren
- Berit Schneider-Stickler
- Andre Schache
- Ian Ganly
- Heikki Irjala
- Steve Cannady
- Ann Sandison
- Petri Koivunen
- Umamaheswar Duvvuri
Brian O’Sullivan
Bio to follow
Hisham Mehanna
PhD, BMedSc (hons), MBChB (hons), FRCS, FRCS (ORL-HNS)
ProfessorHisham Mehanna is the Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor, Chair of Head and Neck Surgery, and Director of the Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education, at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Hisham’s clinical interests are recurrence head and neck cancer surgery. Prof Mehanna established and ran the UK’s first clinic dedicated to the multi-disciplinary treatment of head and neck and thyroid cancer recurrence.
Hisham has a keen interest in clinical and translational research, heading a research team of 20 researchers, and holding over £17 million in research grants. His main area of his research revolves around improving the management of head and neck cancer through the use of innovative treatments and dynamic risk stratification and assessment. His research spans translational research, early and late phase clinical trials. He is chief investigator of several multicentre and multinational clinical trials, including the PET NECK trial (published in the NEJM in 2016), and the De-escalate study (Lancet 2018) and EPIC HPV (Lancet Onc 2023).
He is also the President of the Head and Neck Cancer International Group (the umbrella organisation of 22 national clinical trials groups), and past President of the British Association of Head Neck Oncologists (BAHNO), and past Chair of the UK’s National Cancer Research Institute’s head and neck group, responsible for all head neck cancer research in the UK.
Christian Simon
Bio to follow
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Neil Gross
Neil D. Gross, M.D., FACS, is a dedicated surgeon and scientist with a passion for service, individualized cancer care and cancer research. Dr. Gross completed a head and neck surgery and oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and has since developed an international reputation as a thought-leader in head and neck cancer. He has published extensively and has served in many service and leadership roles nationally and internationally.
Dr. Gross currently serves as Professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery and Medical Director of Perioperative Surgical Services at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His clinical and research interests focus on improving functional outcomes using transoral robotic surgery (TORS) for HPV-associated oropharynx cancer and neoadjuvant approaches to head and neck cancers including aggressive cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC). Dr. Gross is an expert in the development and execution of surgeon-led clinical trials, including a registrational-intent randomized phase 3 trial using neoadjuvant immunotherapy for advanced, resectable CSCC.
Cesare Piazza
Cesare Piazza, MD, born in Cremona, Italy, in 1971, is Full Professor and Chief of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery of the University of Brescia – A.S.S.T. Spedali Civili Brescia, Italy, since September 2020, and Director of the Residency Program in Otorhinolaryngology, University of Brescia, from September 2022; he is Research Director of the Department of Medical and Surgical Specialties, Radiological Sciences, and Public Health of the School of Medicine of the University of Brescia, from May 2021. He received his MD degree at the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1996 and completed his Residency Programme in Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery in Brescia in 2001. He became Assistant Professor in 2007 and Associate Professor – Chief of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Maxillofacial, and Thyroid Surgery of the National Cancer Institute, University of Milan, Italy (from 2017 to 2020) – in 2017. His clinical and research activities are focused on head and neck oncology, with special emphasis to laryngo-hypopharyngeal, tracheal, oral, thyroid, parotid, sarcoma, laser, and reconstructive microsurgery.
Dr. Piazza from 2021 to 2023 has been President of the European Laryngological Society and President of Lombard Group of Otolaryngologists. He is Editor in Chief of Acta Otorhinolaryngologica Italica from January 2023.
Lisette van der Molen
Bio to follow
Elisabeth Sjogren
Bio to follow
Berit Schneider-Stickler
Bio to follow
Andre Schache
BDS MBChB(Hons) FDSRCS FRCS(OMFS) FHEA PhD
Professor Andrew Schache is a Clinical-Academic Oral & Maxillofacial (H&N) Surgeon working in the renowned Liverpool Head & Neck Centre, with its clinical base at Aintree Hospital. Professor Schache holds a personal chair in Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Liverpool. His clinical academic role draws upon experiences from both clinical practice and the H&N cancer research environment.
After initial undergraduate training in his native New Zealand, he moved to the UK in 1999. He completed his higher surgical training in the Liverpool unit and gained a prestigious Wellcome Trust Doctoral Research Fellowship, ultimately receiving both his PhD in Molecular Oncology and the Gold Medal in the Intercollegiate OMFS exit examination in 2013. He was an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer (2014) before taking up a consultant/academic appointment to Liverpool University and Aintree in 2015, and later gaining a personal chair in 2022.
Within his clinical role, Professor Schache covers the breadth of Oral & Maxillofacial oncology surgery and reconstruction with a particular interest in virtual surgical planning technologies for complex custom composite reconstructions.
His academic interests relate to the epidemiology of HPV-mediated H&N cancer and improving outcomes for locally advanced oral cavity cancer patients through the use of novel technologies and therapies in surgical trials and related translational research. He shares with the Head & Neck team, an ambition of offering all patients the opportunity and choice to be involved in clinical research/clinical trials, with the aim of improving patient outcomes and has led several mutlicentre clinical trials.
He has published extensively in the field of both clinical and translational head and neck cancer research, including work that proved pivotal in influencing the UK government to approve gender-neutral HPV vaccination. Professor Schache supervises a wide range of clinical and non-clinical doctoral researchers and postgraduates and is the lead for Education for the Liverpool Head & Neck Centre, overseeing and coordinating the extensive portfolio of H&N educational course that LHNC delivers.
Ian Ganly
Prof Ian Ganly, BSc, MD, MSc, PhD, FRCS (Edin), FRCS (Glas), FRCS-ORL (Edin) received his training in Otolaryngology at the University of Glasgow teaching hospitals in Scotland, UK and in Head and Neck Surgical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer.
He was an attending head and neck surgeon at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK from 2005-2008 before moving to his present position as Attending Head and Neck surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2008.
He is senior Attending surgeon at MSKCC and is Professor of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery at Weill College, Cornell University, New York.
He received his PhD in molecular oncology in 1999 and his clinical research MD degree in 2001 from the University of Glasgow. In 2017 he obtained his Masters degree in epidemiology and biostatistics from Columbia University, New York.
He has expertise in all aspects of multidisciplinary care of cancer of the head and neck. He also has an interest in translational research and collaborates with scientists at MSKCC on oncogenomics of head and neck cancer pathogenesis. His clinical research interests are in clinical outcomes research and the development of nomograms to predict outcomes in individual patients with head and neck cancer. He has mentored over 50 clinical research fellows and 4 PhD students. He has published more than 340 peer reviewed scientific articles, has an H index of 77 and written several book chapters in the field of head and neck cancer.
Heikki Irjala
Heikki Irjala is a Professor and Chairman of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery in Turku University Finland. He does research on both translational field studying cancer immunology and biomarkers and on several clinical areas of head and neck cancer patients. Heikki’s operative expertise is in reconstructive head and neck cancer surgery.
Steve Cannady
Bio to follow
Ann Sandison
Bio to follow
Petri Koivunen
Dr Petri Koivunen is the Head of the Departments of ENT and head and neck surgery at Oulu University Hospital, Finland
He is current chair of the Finnish working group of head and neck Oncology which is responsible of National guidelines .He has authored or co-authored about 100 scientific papers, mostly focused on head and neck surgery, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Oncology since 2022. He has been a member of Cancer Foundation of Finland for 9 years.
Umamaheswar Duvvuri
Umamaheswar Duvvuri, MD, PhD, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania obtaining his Medical Degree in 2000 and his PhD in Biophysics in 2002. He completed an internship in General Surgery in 2003 and residency training in Otolaryngology in 2007 at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He completed fellowship training in Head and Neck Surgery in 2008 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
He currently serves as the Mendik Foundation Professor and Chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology- Head & Neck Surgery at NYU Langone Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He was previously Director of Robotic Surgery at UPMC, and co-director of the Head & Neck Cancer Program at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. He leads a federally funded laboratory studying the mechanisms by which head and neck cancers resist therapies, seeing to develop innovative strategies to optimize treatment outcomes for patients with head and neck cancer.
He has authored numerous research publications and book chapters and has delivered lecturers on the subject of head and neck cancer surgery both nationally and internationally.
A Fulbright scholar, his research interests include minimally invasive endoscopic and robotic surgery of the head and neck, tumors of the thyroid and parathyroid glands and molecular oncology of head and neck cancer. He is a leader in his field and has proctored Transoral Robotic Surgery cases at numerous medical educational facilities throughout the United States and Europe.