Karthik Rajasekaran, M.D., F.A.S.C. is a distinguished head and neck oncologic and reconstructive surgeon dedicated to providing personalized, patient-centered treatment plans for individuals with benign and malignant tumors. With a commitment to excellence in both clinical care and research, Dr. Rajasekaran is recognized as a leader in the field of head and neck cancer treatment.

Beyond his clinical practice, Dr. Rajasekaran is a prolific researcher with over 175 scientific publications and textbook chapters to his name. His research focuses on improving patient outcomes in advanced head and neck cancer, reducing opioid use in cancer care, and optimizing perioperative management. His contributions have earned him numerous national awards, prestigious research grants, and invitations to present at esteemed national and international conferences.

Dr. Rajasekaran’s unwavering dedication to innovation and patient care continues to shape the future of head and neck cancer treatment, making a lasting impact on the field and the lives of his patients.

Kavita Sarin, M.D./Ph.D., is a Professor of Dermatology and is the Director of the Stanford Skin Cancer Genetics Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute. She has an academic interest in Precision Medicine, focused on the integration of genetic and clinical patient data to inform susceptibility, prognosis, and treatments in skin cancer and other rare dermatologic disorders. Her lab applies cutting-edge sequencing and imaging technologies to better understand skin cancer and rare immunologic skin diseases. She sees patients in medical dermatology at Portola Valley and the Stanford Cancer Institute.

Lidia Schapira, M.D. is a medical oncologist with clinical expertise in the treatment of breast cancer. She is the Inaugural Director of Stanford's Cancer Survivorship Program and a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Schapira has developed a thriving research and clinical program focused on optimizing health outcomes for people living with and beyond cancer. Her clinical research focuses on improving cancer care and outcomes with a particular focus on young adults with breast cancer and cancer survivors.

Dr. Schapira received her medical degree from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston and fellowships at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Schapira is leading efforts to build capacity for caring for the growing number of cancer survivors by designing and championing training for healthcare professionals and resources for patients and family caregivers. She has published numerous manuscripts and lectures, both nationally and internationally, on issues of cancer survivorship.

Dr. Jill Kruse is a family physician and CEO of Flight Time Medical. She is also hospitalist at Brookings Health System. She earned her DO degree at Des Moines University- College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery. Her residency training was at the University of Wisconsin Madison-Baraboo Rural Training Track.

At Flight Time Medical, she serves as a Senior Aviation Medical Examiner for the FAA and enjoys flying her Grumman Tiger airplane in her free time.

Dr. Kruse is one of the hosts of the television show “On Call with the Prairie Doc” on South Dakota Public TV. She has done significant work in physician wellness as one of the founders and first medical director of the Avera LIGHT program. She wrote two chapters in “Transforming the Heart of Practice: An Organizational and Personal Approach to Physician Wellbeing”.

She has also received the American Medical Association Women’s Section “Inspirational Physician Award” and the Catholic Health Association’s “Tomorrows Leader Award”. Along with her fellow Prairie Docs, she received the South Dakota State Medical Association‘s “Richard Holm Media Award” and the “Community Service Award”.

Dr. Liz Etkin-Kramer is a board-certified gynecologist who has been in clinical practice in South Florida since the 1990s. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and holds multiple leadership roles within District XII of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Dr EK is a huge proponent of personalized risk assessment for women's health. Through her work with ACOG District XII’s Patient Safety and Quality Improvement (PSQI) committee, Dr. EK has created educational material for both the gynecologist and their patients on breast cancer risk assessment and management. She educates other health care providers on breast and ovarian cancer risk assessment and management, inclusive of genetic testing for hereditary cancer.

In 2018, Dr.EK founded Yodeah.org, a nonprofit organization committed to increasing awareness within the Ashkenazi Jewish community about hereditary cancer risk and providing access to affordable genetic testing. To date, she has counseled and tested thousands of men and women regarding their cancer risks based on the results of genetic testing.

Allison Kurian, M.D., M.Sc. is a Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University. She is Associate Chief of the Division of Oncology, Director of the Stanford Women’s Clinical Cancer Genetics Program, Co-Leader of the Population Sciences Program and Co-Director of the Data Science Core for the Stanford Cancer Institute. Dr. Kurian graduated from Stanford University, attended Harvard Medical School followed by Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and completed Medical Oncology fellowship and a master’s degree in Epidemiology at Stanford University.

Dr. Kurian’s research focuses on the identification of women with elevated breast and gynecologic cancer risk, and on the development and evaluation of novel techniques for early cancer detection and risk reduction. As an oncologist and epidemiologist, she aims to understand cancer burden and improve cancer treatment quality at the population level. Her research employs methods from the population sciences, in collaboration with the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program and other large, real-world data resources. Dr. Kurian leads epidemiologic studies of cancer risk factors, clinical trials of novel approaches to cancer risk reduction, and decision analyses of strategies to improve cancer outcomes. She has published more than 320 peer-reviewed articles, and her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, California Breast Cancer Research Program, Komen for the Cure Foundation, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and others. Dr. Kurian’s work has been honored by Impact Awards of the National Consortium of Breast Centers and the BRCA Foundation, selection as a Komen Scholar and election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

Mary-Claire King, Ph.D. grew up in Chicago. She received her BA cum laude in Mathematics from Carleton College in Minnesota, her PhD in Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley, and her postdoctoral training at UC San Francisco. She was professor at UC Berkeley from 1976-1995 and has been American Cancer Society Professor of Medical Genetics and of Genome Sciences at UW since 1995.

I am trained in Family Medicine and until recently served as a primary care physician at Mainehealth and as a faculty member teaching both medical students and residents through Tufts Medical School and Maine Medical Center respectively. At Maine Medical Center, I helped lead an Integrative Medicine fellowship through a partnership with Andrew Weil's Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. In that training program, we served as an outpatient consult service for patients to help address their chronic health issues from an Integrative perspective. I am trained in medical acupuncture and have used acupuncture regularly in my practice, mostly for the treatment of a variety of pain conditions. More recently I helped develop and lead a Lifestyle Medicine program at Mainehealth centered around health coaching and group medical visits to prevent and treat chronic disease. My clinical and teaching role has changed to the University of Vermont where my clinical work is now at UVM's Comprehensive Pain Program. Together with the Osher Center, we are hoping to expand our clinical services to include Integrative Oncology/Survivorship and in general expand into a Whole Health model of care for a variety of chronic health conditions.

Dr. Dyer completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard before attending medical school at the University of Connecticut.  After two years of general surgery training at Mass General and Urology residency at Lahey Clinic, she joined a private practice urology group in Winchester & Melrose, where she practiced for 18 years.  She joined MGH as a general urologist in 2020.

Dr. Alan P. Venook is a nationally renowned expert in colon and liver cancers. He leads the gastrointestinal oncology program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also chairs an institutional review board (a committee that examines the ethics of study proposals) at UCSF and represents UCSF on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's board of directors.

Venook's focus in both patient care and research is on understanding and managing colon and liver cancers. As the lead investigator of a foundational study on advanced colon cancer, he was the first to observe differences between cancers of the right and left side of the large intestine.

Venook earned his medical degree at UCSF. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, Davis, followed by a fellowship in hematology and oncology at UCSF. After his internal medicine internship at UCSF, he served in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service for two years. He has been a UCSF faculty member since 1988.

Dr. Tseng serves as Trustee of the PRIA Ben and Rose Cole Pancreatic Cancer Research Foundation, as deputy editor of JAMA Surgery, and as section editor of UpToDate. From 2019-2025 she served on the American Board of Surgery as Director and then Councillor, and is a past-President of the Society of Asian Academic Surgeons and of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract. From 2017 to 2024, Dr Tseng served as the James Utley Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery.

Dr. Anne Blaes is a Professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Minnesota. She is the Director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program (CPC) within the Masonic Cancer Center. She is an active medical oncologist with a special interest in the late effects of cancer therapy, particularly in the area of cardio-oncology. Her research focuses on designing and implementing strategies to help prevent the long term complications of treatments in our cancer survivors, particularly in the areas of cardiovascular health. She is the Chair for the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Cancer Survivorship Committee, a member of the Executive Board for the Global Cardiooncology Society, associate editor for JACC Cardio-oncology, section editor for Hem/Onc Today on Survivorship and an active member of the ALLIANCE for Cancer Clinical Trials.

Dr. MacLaughlan David is Associate Professor of Clinical Ob/Gyn, and Director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She attended medical school at the University of Florida College of Medicine, followed by residency in obstetrics and gynecology at what is now the University of South Carolina Greenville Medical School. Dr. MacLaughlan David completed her fellowship in Gynecologic and Breast Oncology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She has a passion for teaching and mentorship, and her interests include translational and clinical research, community engagement and clinical implementation work.

Alan Ashworth is President of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California, San Francisco and Senior Vice President for clinical services, UCSF Health. Ashworth was a key member of the team that discovered the BRCA2 gene in 1995, which is linked to an increased risk of breast, ovarian and other cancers. In 2005, his lab described a way to exploit genetic weaknesses (using synthetic lethality) in cancer cells with mutated BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, leading to a new approach to cancer treatment, PARP inhibition. Four different PARP inhibitors have now been approved by the FDA for the treatment of ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer based on this observation, which was named by Nature in the top 20 discoveries in cancer in the 21st century. He continues to develop new treatments for cancer using genetic principles.

He has received a number of awards and prizes many of which recognize the innovative and translational nature of his work as well as its clinical impact. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, the American Association of Cancer Research and the Royal Society. Prizes include the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Lifetime Achievement Award, the David T. Workman Memorial Award of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, the Meyenburg Foundation’s Cancer Research Award, the Genetics Society Medal, the Susan G Komen Brinker award and the inaugural Basser Global Prize.

My clinical research interests are first-in-human early phase clinical trials of novel compounds and alternative strategies for the treatment and prevention of cancer. I have been involved in clinical and translational research in early phase clinical trials since 1998. As the program leader for Development Therapeutics and the PI of a peer-reviewed basic science lab, my main focus is on translating preclinical findings into early-stage clinical trials with extensive PK and integration of PD correlative studies and molecular imaging for patients with advanced stage cancer.

My basic research interest is centered on the role of epigenetic modification in therapy resistance in breast cancer and epigenetic priming. In addition to studying basic mechanisms of hormone therapy resistance, we have shown that epigenetic modification plays a crucial role in the hormonal regulation and carcinogenesis of breast cancer.

Dr. Catherine Jones, MD, is a dedicated Medical Oncologist serving the Lubbock, TX community at Practice. With 16 years of experience in Medical Oncology, she brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her patients. Dr. Jones completed her medical education at Drexel University and is board certified in Internal Medicine. She is affiliated with University Medical Center, where she collaborates with a team of healthcare professionals to provide comprehensive cancer care.

Dr. Jones is highly regarded for her compassionate and patient-centered approach to oncology care, consistently achieving a 5.0-star rating from her patients. She specializes in treating breast cancer, among other conditions, and is committed to personalizing treatment plans to suit each patient’s unique needs. Her dedication to staying at the forefront of medical advancements ensures that her patients receive the most effective and innovative treatments available.

In addition to her clinical expertise, Dr. Jones is deeply committed to the well-being of her community. She is currently accepting new patients and works with a wide range of insurance providers, including UnitedHealthCare, Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Humana. Her commitment to accessibility and patient outcomes makes her a valuable asset to both her patients and the Lubbock healthcare community.