Dr. Antonoff completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her medical degree at the University of Minnesota, where she also completed internship and residency in General Surgery. Dr. Antonoff completed a fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University in St Louis. She joined MD Anderson in 2014, where she’s currently an Associate Professor of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Program Director for Education. She is the Deputy Head of Education for Surgery.

Dr. Antonoff’s research interests include pulmonary metastatic disease, early detection of lung cancer, and local consolidative therapy for stage IV lung cancer. She is the surgical lead for several trials evaluating the role of local consolidative therapy for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. She holds several leadership roles in the STS, including chair of the STS Council on Member Engagement and its leadership Institute. She serves as the Vice President and President-Elect of the WTS. She further holds leadership roles within the AATS, the STSA, the AWS, IASLC, ESTS, and the TSDA, and Senior Editorial Board positions for Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Innovations, CTSNet, and Journal of Thoracic Disease.

Dr. Bahig specializes in the treatment of lung and head and neck cancers, with an interest in the development of pragmatic clinical trials evaluating new technological approaches to personalize radiation therapy treatments. She works on the development of algorithms using artificial intelligence to predict response and side effects of lung and head & neck radiation therapy. She is the principal investigator of the RESCUE trial, evaluating the role of adjuvant radiotherapy in stage III NSCLC in the neoadjuvant era.

Dr. Quincy Chu has been a medical oncologist at the Cross Cancer Institute since April 2005. He completed his medical oncology training in Canada, followed by a Phase I/clinical research fellowship in novel anti-cancer drug development at the Institute for Drug Development. During his fellowship, he was involved in the development of numerous novel anti-cancer agents and received additional training in innovative clinical trial design and clinical pharmacology.

Dr. Chu is currently a professor in the Department of Oncology at the University of Alberta. His clinical and translational research focuses on novel drug development, including targeted therapies and immuno-oncology agents in thoracic oncology. At the Cross Cancer Institute, he serves as co-lead of the Phase I Unit and lead of the Thoracic Research Unit.

Dr. Alberto Cruz-Bermúdez is a Principal Investigator at the Health Research Institute Puerta de Hierro, where he specializes in the tumor microenvironment of lung cancer. Since establishing this research program in 2016, he has built and currently leads a multidisciplinary team of eight researchers focused on elucidating the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying therapeutic response, with particular emphasis on neoadjuvant immunotherapy.

Dr. Cruz-Bermúdez is an active member of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP), contributing to the translational research components of multiple clinical trials. Notably, he co-led the translational research program for the landmark NADIM Trials, generating critical biological insights and identifying key biomarkers in the evolving field of perioperative chemo-immunotherapy.

He is also a pioneer in the application of T-cell receptor (TCR) and B-cell receptor (BCR) gene sequencing in early-stage lung cancer. His laboratory employs a high-dimensional, multi-omic approach, including spatial transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), and multiplex immunofluorescence, to characterize the spatial organization of the immune response and identify novel therapeutic targets.

Dr. Cruz-Bermúdez’s scientific excellence is reflected in an outstanding publication record, with 21 Q1 publications over the past five years. His work has appeared in leading medical and oncology journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, The Lancet Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, and the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.

Dr D’Amours is a Medical Oncologist and a Hematologist in Quebec. She obtained her medical degree from Laval University Quebec, where she also completed her residency in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology and Hematology.

She completed a clinical fellowship at the University of British Columbia, BC Cancer Vancouver, focusing on thoracic malignancies and targeted therapies. Her current practice focuses on thoracic and head and neck cancers. She has interests in real-world analysis and medical education. She has presented at several international conferences and serves on the Royal College of Canada’s Board of Certification in Medical Oncology.

Luis Corrales, MD is a medical oncologist and director of the Centro de Investigación y Manejo del Cáncer (CIMCA) in San José, Costa Rica. He obtained his medical degree at the Universidad de Costa Rica and completed his Medical Oncology residency program at the same university in 2009. He then pursued a Thoracic Oncology Fellowship at Hôpital Notre-Dame from the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) in Montreal, Canada.

He currently is a pre-graduate and post-graduate professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica. He is the leading investigator for Costa Rica of several international clinical trials at CIMCA and has served as an advisor for the PanAmerican Health Organization (PAHO). He is a founding member and co-director of Consorcio Latinoamericano para la Investigación del Cáncer de Pulmón (CLICaP) and the Grupo Latino americano de Oncología Digestiva (GLOD), member of the ASCO Latin American Council, and member of different committees of the IASLC, ASCO, and ISLB.

Nathalie Daaboul, MD. FRCPC is a hematologist-oncologist practicing at the Integrated Cancer Center of the Montérégie, at Hôpital Charles LeMoyne (in South-Shore Montreal, Quebec, Canada). She has a thoracic oncology subspeciality from the University of Ottawa. Her current clinical areas of practice are in lung and upper GI cancers.

She is interested in clinical research, medical education, and patient advocacy at regional / provincial and national levels. Most notably, she leads the RESOT (Quebec's Community of Practice for lung cancer research). She is also an associate professor at the Université de Sherbrooke.

Dr. Narjust Florez is a clinician-researcher committed to improving cancer care for vulnerable populations, particularly young patients and women with lung cancer. Her clinical interests and research focus on utilizing novel approaches for timely lung cancer diagnosis, targeted therapies for early-stage lung cancer, the unique disease characteristics in young adults with lung cancer, survivorship challenges in lung cancer, and the role of intersectionality in shaping patients’ experiences.

Dr. José Francisco Corona-Cruz is a thoracic surgical oncologist and Head of the Thoracic Surgical Oncology Service at the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología (INCan), Mexico’s largest comprehensive cancer center.

He also serves as Coordinator of the Thoracic Oncology Functional Unit, leading a multidisciplinary program focused on the comprehensive management of thoracic malignancies. He is Professor and Director of the UNAM-accredited postgraduate program in Thoracic Surgical Oncology, the only formal training program of its kind in Mexico, aimed at developing highly specialized surgeons aligned with international standards.

Dr. Corona-Cruz is an active member of international organizations including IASLC and ASCO, contributing to global initiatives in thoracic oncology education and collaboration. His academic work focuses on the multimodality treatment of thoracic malignancies, minimally invasive and robotic approaches in thoracic surgical oncology, and the implementation of high-quality cancer care models in low-and middle-income countries.

BIO Coming Soon!

Dr. McGuire is an Advanced Thoracic Fellowship Trained active staff thoracic surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and the University of British Columbia. Dr. McGuire is a successful researcher with specialty interests in lung cancer, esophageal cancer, minimally invasive surgical technology (keyhole surgery), diseases of the thymus, esophageal function and other surgical diseases of the chest.

Dr. McGuire‘s current research projects focus on lung cancer including biomarkers and thoracic surgical epidemiology.

After graduating from the University of Toronto School of Medicine, Dr. McGuire completed a general surgery residency at Queens University, thoracic surgery residency and advanced thoracic surgery fellowship at the University of Ottawa, and Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology with the University of London (LSHTM). Since this time, Dr. McGuire returned home to Vancouver, and has been on faculty at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital as a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada board certified academic thoracic surgeon.

Dr. Barbara Melosky is a Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and a Medical Oncologist in Vancouver at BC Cancer. She graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba and did a residency in internal medicine and an oncology fellowship at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Melosky specializes in the field of thoracic malignancies.

Dr. Melosky sits on the Executive Lung Site Committee for Canadian Clinical Trials Group (CCTG). She chairs the annual Canadian Lung Cancer Conference attended by over 450 participants, for the last 24 years.

Dr. Melosky is proud to have built the British Columbia Lung Cancer Biobank which is actively used for research for all interested.

She is published extensively and is considered a national and international expert in thoracic malignancies.

Sean P. Pitroda, MD, Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Chicago Medicine, is a physician-scientist dedicated to transforming the treatment of metastatic cancer through patient-centered translational research. His work challenges one of oncology's most entrenched assumptions — that metastatic disease is always widespread and incurable — and instead seeks to identify which patients can achieve long-term cure with targeted, localized therapies.

Dr. Pitroda earned his BS in Biomedical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology before completing his MD at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine in 2011. He subsequently completed his residency training in Radiation Oncology at the University of Chicago, where he has remained as a faculty member, researcher, and clinician.

His laboratory focuses on understanding the tumor-intrinsic and host factors that determine clinical outcomes in patients with metastatic disease. Using integrative molecular analyses of clinical metastases, bioinformatics, tumor models, immunologic profiling, and statistical modeling, Dr. Pitroda and his team have made landmark contributions to the field of oligometastasis.

Duncan Preece has an initial background in health sciences with a specialization in clinical oncology at Europe’s top cancer hospital, the Royal Marsden, in London. He subsequently worked for many years for a large European University Hospital, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne, Switzerland, chiefly as the head of international medical personnel recruitment and retention. He also worked as a management consultant for EY for several years.

Duncan was diagnosed with stage 4 ALK Positive lung cancer in 2018 and is still on his original TKI. He took up advocacy at ALK Positive Inc (API) in the US and is a current member of the Board of Directors, as well as of several committees. Noting the absence of a similar organization in Canada, he made contact with a number of Canadian patients and instigated the founding of ALK Positive Canada (APC). This organization was incorporated in January 2025 under a federal charter.

Dr. Bertrand Routy MD, PhD is a clinician-scientist and associate professor in the department of hemato-oncology at the CHUM (University of Montreal). Upon his recruitment to the CRCHUM in 2018 after completing his PhD with Pr. Laurence Zitvogel, Dr. Routy quickly established himself as the scientific director of the CHUM Microbiome Centre where he began his work to develop novel microbiome-based therapeutics in oncology.

His work contributed to the discovery of the gut microbiome as a novel prognostic biomarker for immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in various cancers. He characterized the deleterious impact of antibiotic-related gut dysbiosis on ICI outcomes, which led to pivotal changes in clinical oncology practice.

Dr. Routy is internationally recognized as a leader in the microbiome field with more than 17,700 citations including publications in Science, Nature Medicine and Annals of Oncology, and h-index of 43.

Dr. Valerie W. Rusch is an Attending Thoracic Surgeon, Vice Chair for Clinical Research in the Department of Surgery, and a member of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she holds the Miner Family Chair in Intrathoracic Cancers.

Following residencies in general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Washington, Dr. Rusch served as a Faculty Associate at the MD Anderson Cancer Center before joining the faculty at the University of Washington. She joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 1989 and served as Chief of Thoracic Surgery from 2000 to 2013.

Dr. Rusch has dedicated her career to thoracic surgical oncology and clinical and translational research. She has served as Principal Investigator for multiple National Cancer Institute-sponsored cooperative group clinical trials.

Dr. Stephanie Snow is a staff Medical Oncologist at the QEII hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, treating thoracic and GI malignancies. After pursuing undergraduate training at McGill, she completed her training at Dalhousie, where she is now a full professor in the Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Snow has a strong interest in Medical Education and is Vice Chair of the Royal College Medical Oncology Examination Board. From a research perspective she is involved in clinical research, is Associate Editor of the peer reviewed journal Current Oncology and has been widely published in prominent journals.

Finally, Dr. Snow is active in patient advocacy, serving as the current President of Lung Cancer Canada, and sits on the medical advisory committees of several other patient advocacy groups in colorectal and gastric cancer.

Dr. Gavitt Woodard is a thoracic surgeon at Yale School of Medicine where she specializes in the care of patients with lung cancer. Dr. Woodard has a degree in neurobiology and health care policy from Harvard University and received her medical degree from Stanford School of Medicine.

She completed her General Surgery Residency and Thoracic Surgery Fellowship at University of California San Francisco. Her research interests are in biomarkers of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer, immune cell infiltration in the tumor immune microenvironment, immune cell dysfunction, and semi-solid lung adenocarcinoma.

She has been the recipient of many research awards including those from the Yale SPORE in Lung Cancer, the American Cancer Society, IASLC Young Investigator Award, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Research Award, LUNGevity, and the Braude Foundation.