麻豆传媒

Shipra Gandhi, MD is an Assistant professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. She completed her fellowship in hematology and oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY and recieved her board certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine.
For medical oncologist and researcher , Assistant Professor of Oncology specializing in breast cancer in the Department of Medicine at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, the path to physician-scientist was clear from the very beginning.
“I was raised in a family of physicians. Both my parents are doctors, and I grew up listening to their conversations about managing difficult cases, so I was very interested in the field of medicine from an early age,” says Dr. Gandhi, who was born and raised in India. Dr. Gandhi attended the prestigious Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi and worked on a project funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research that investigated advanced methods of tuberculosis detection. “I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to become a doctor. But I was also interested in new discoveries, so I knew that in addition to taking care of patients, I somehow wanted to be actively involved in research to move the field forward.”

---

---

---

Dr. Holly Pederson is the Director of the Medical Breast Program at the Cleveland Clinic and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. She runs a Hereditary High Risk Clinic for patients with identified genetic mutations predisposing to breast and is actively involved in clinical research. She is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, completed a clinical genetics fellowship at Cleveland Clinic in 2008 and the City of Hope Intensive Course in Cancer Risk Assessment in 2017. She serves on the NCCN Genetic/Familial High-Risk Assessment: Breast and Ovarian committee. She received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara and completed medical school and her internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco where she earned the distinction of Alpha Omega Alpha. Dr. Pederson emphasizes wellness and prevention in her personal and professional endeavors and would like to be part of a national movement as part of Breastcancer.org that emphasizes breast health, women's health, and overall health.

Dr. Gupta is a genitourinary oncologist with a research focus on clinical and translational research in genitourinary cancers. Prior to joining the Cleveland Clinic in June 2019, Dr. Gupta was an associate professor at the University of Minnesota where she led the phase I interdisciplinary Solid Tumor Program and Genitourinary Oncology Research. 



Research Information

Research Interests

Dr. Gupta has expertise and interest in novel targeted therapy and immunotherapy trials across genitourinary cancers. She has led several early and late-phase clinical trials including investigator-initiated trials with novel combinations in bladder cancer and testicular cancer, for example, neoadjuvant use of nivolumab and platinum doublet in muscle-invasive bladder cancer, enzalutamide and platinum-doublet in metastatic androgen receptor-positive bladder cancer, brentuximab and bevacizumab in CD30+ germ cell tumors. In collaboration with her basic science colleagues including Dr. Scott Dehm at University of Minnesota, she is studying the molecular efficacy of enzalutamide.
Dr. Gupta is also interested in understanding the resistance mechanisms to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies and serves as a member of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 resistance taskforce. She has also been appointed to serve as a member on the annual scientific committee for non-prostate cancers.

---

Dr. Sagus Sampath is a radiation oncologist in Duarte, California and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including  and . He received his medical degree from University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine and has been in practice between 11-20 years. Dr. Sagus Sampath accepts Medicare, Blue Cross, United Healthcare - see other .

Sawsan Rashdan, M.D., is an Assistant Professor in the  at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She specializes in treating thoracic malignancies. She is the Director of Thoracic Medical Oncology Clinical Operations.
Dr. Rashdan earned her medical degree at the Faculty of Medicine of Damascus University in Syria. She performed her residency in internal medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where she also completed advanced fellowship training in hematology and oncology.
Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in hematology and medical oncology, she joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2016.
Dr. Rashdan’s research focuses on lung cancer, and she has published a number of academic articles on the subject. She has received funding to pilot a clinical trial to investigate the role of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) plus osimertinib as first-line treatment in epidermal growth factor receptor-mutated non-small cell lung cancer. Additionally, she is the Division Quality Officer as well as the Director of Health Equity in the division of hematology and oncology, leading the effort to reduce inequities of health care and increase access of cancer prevention education in minority groups.
Dr. Rashdan also spends time teaching the trainees at UTSW, she leads the lung cancer curriculum for the hematology and oncology fellows at Parkland. In addition to mentoring many fellows, residents, and medical students.
She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and the Dallas County Medical Society as well as American Muslim Women Physicians Association. She is also a member of several committees including: Supporting Women in Achieving Greatness, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee in the Department of Internal Medicine at UTSW.

Briefly, Puneeth Iyengar joined the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX USA in the summer of 2010 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, with a professional emphasis on treating lung cancer patients. He is co-leader of the Thoracic Oncology Program in the Harold Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, leader of the Lung Radiation Oncology Team, Director of Clinical Research for the Department of Radiation Oncology, and institutional representative to NRG from UT Southwestern. His clinical focus is on studying local therapy for oligometastatic NSCLC. He has published significantly in this area, in top tier journals including JCO, JAMA Oncology, Lancet Oncology, among others. He is overall PI of the international trial NRG LU 002, a randomized phase III study assessing local therapy in the setting of immunotherapy and oligometastatic NSCLC. As a physician scientist, Dr. Iyengar runs an independent laboratory with a focus on studying the complex crosstalk between inflammatory states, cachexia, and lung cancer progression and therapeutic resistance. His research program has been funded by organizations including the National Lung Cancer Partnership, Lung Cancer Research Foundation, and Radiological Society of North America. He has also received a President’s Council Distinguished Researcher Award from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas as well as a Sidney Kimmel Research Foundation Award over the last few years. Finally, he received an American Cancer Society Independent Investigator Research Scholar Award. He received his undergraduate degree from MIT, MD and PhD degrees from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, and radiation oncology residency training from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition, he is Board Certified in Radiation Oncology and have been granted medical licensure to practice in Texas.

Jonathan Dowell, M.D., is a Professor in the  at UT Southwestern, and a member of the . He also serves as Chief of Hematology/Oncology at the Dallas VA Medical Center.
Dr. Dowell specializes primarily in thoracic malignancies, including non-small cell and small cell lung cancers, mesothelioma, and thymoma.
Dr. Dowell earned his bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he graduated magna cum laude. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine and completed internal medicine residency training at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He then completed advanced training through a fellowship in hematology and oncology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in hematology and in oncology, Dr, Dowell joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 1996.
Dr. Dowell’s research interests include thoracic malignancies. His investigations have resulted in 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals and contributions to more than 50 book chapters, reviews, editorials, and case reports. Additionally, he has presented his findings at scientific conferences throughout the United States and internationally.
At UT Southwestern, Dr. Dowell chairs the Simmons Cancer Center Data and Safety Monitoring Committee and co-chairs the Dallas VA Transfusion Utilization Committee and the Veterans Integrated Service Network 17 Hematology/Oncology Work Group.
Dr. Dowell is active in several professional societies, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology, the Texas Medical Association, and the Dallas County Medical Society.

Dr. Zhang joined UT Southwestern as an assistant professor in September, 2007. He currently serves as the director of BERD (Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design) for the UTSW CTSA program. He also serves on the NCI Central Institutional Review Board (Adult CIRB – Early Phase Emphasis). 
Dr. Zhang’s research interest in statistical methodology lies in two main areas: Bayesian hierarchical modeling and clinical trial design. He has published multiple papers on the application of Bayesian hierarchical models to disease mapping, joint modeling of longitudinal and survival outcomes, item-response theory for grant review, functional enrichment analysis to detect important pathways, and multi-level modeling to detect factors that impact cancer screening, etc. Another area of his research interest is design methodology for clinical trials to account for various pragmatic issues such as correlated outcomes (clustered and longitudinal), missing data, small sample sizes, historical control, random variability in cluster size, and cost constraints, etc. He has published multiple high quality papers in this area and in 2015 he co-authored a book titled “Sample Size Calculations on Clustered and Longitudinal Outcomes in Clinical Research” (Chapman & Hall, New York). Dr. Zhang has been successful in securing extramural grants as the PI to support his independent research program, examples include an NIH R03 grant to conduct secondary data analysis on VA HIV registry; an NSF grant to build risk prediction model based on electronic health record data; and a PCORI methodology development grant to address pragmatic design issues in stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials.

Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at UT Southwestern Medical Center specializing in treating lung cancer patients with radiotherapy.
Dr. Zhang earned her medical and doctorate degrees from UT Southwestern. Following graduation, she completed an internship with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and, subsequently, completed her residency at UT Southwestern.
“I like to care for patients and their families in ways that are meaningful and valuable to them by understanding their unique circumstance and challenges, involving them in the decision-making process, and providing the emotional support and care coordination every step along the way – just as I would do for my family members.”
When Dr. Zhang is not in the clinic, she researches ways to improve the effectiveness of radiotherapy in lung cancer in the lab. “We still need better treatments, both increasing the survival rate and quality of life for our patients. To me, staying at the forefront of research presents an element of hope and commitment to our patients.”
Dr. Zhang is a member of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), and the Society of Women in Radiation Oncology (SWRO).

Ken Westover, M.D., Ph.D., started his research career as a summer undergraduate research fellow in the labs of Nobel Prize laureates Michael Brown, M.D., and Joseph Goldstein, M.D., at UT Southwestern. It was there that he learned the basics of biochemistry and became convinced that he wanted to become a physician-scientist. 
After graduating with honors from Brigham Young University, with a B.S. in biochemistry, Dr. Westover entered the Stanford University Medical Scientist Training Program where he worked in the lab of Roger Kornberg, Ph.D., on the structural biology and biochemistry of gene transcription. Dr. Westover’s work was subsequently cited in the 2006 Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded to Dr. Kornberg.
Radiation oncology was a natural fit for Dr. Westover given his laboratory experience, which had natural connections to cancer biology and included elements of imaging research, radiation science, and computer science. Most importantly, Dr. Westover found he was passionate about the practice of oncology. 
Dr. Westover completed his residency in radiation oncology at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, where he simultaneously worked in the lab of Nathanael Gray, Ph.D., in the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, learning principles of structure-based drug design and chemical biology. He also completed Harvard’s Intensive Translational Research Program.
Now at UT Southwestern, Dr. Westover focuses his clinical efforts on lung cancer and his research efforts on improving cancer therapies. In addition to targeted drug design, Dr. Westover hopes to find new ways to combine radiation therapy and targeted drugs.

Suzanne Cole, M.D., is a medical oncologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She serves as the Medical Director of the . She is also Medical Director of the Community Oncology Program at  and Research Leader for the Community Oncology Program.
Dr. Cole earned her medical degree at UT Southwestern, where she also completed her residency in internal medicine. She then received advanced training in hematology and medical oncology through a fellowship at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Dr. Cole spent eight years caring for patients in their local communities before she joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2018.
Board certified in hematology and oncology, Dr. Cole is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. She is active in a number of cancer-related professional organizations, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Hematology, and she previously served on the board of the Oklahoma Society of Clinical Oncology. She is the founder of the Hematology & Oncology Women Physician Group.
Dr. Cole has delivered presentations throughout the nation and published articles in peer-reviewed journals covering topics related to cancer and blood-related disorders.

David Gerber, M.D., is a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and a member of its Division of Hematology/Oncology. He serves as Associate Director of Clinical Research for Simmons Cancer Center.
Originally from Chicago, Dr. Gerber holds a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he graduated cum laude. He earned his medical degree at Cornell University Medical College in New York, and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at UT Southwestern, where he served as Chief Resident. He then received advanced training through a fellowship in medical oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.  
Board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology, Dr. Gerber joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2007. 
Dr. Gerber is active in research related to lung cancer, including clinical trials. His research has generated more than 250 publications that he has authored or co-authored, including articles and book chapters. His studies have contributed to invitations to lecture both nationally and internationally.
He serves on several committees at UT Southwestern. Beyond the institution, he serves as Chair of the Clinical Trials Advisory Committee for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) and is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Oncology Research Program Investigator Steering Committee.
Dr. Gerber holds memberships in several professional organizations, and he has been honored with numerous awards, including being named a Best Doctor in Dallas by D Magazine during the years of 2011-2023.

Dr. Marianna Koczywas has been a staff physician at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2001, specializing in thoracic oncology and diseases of the lungs, including .
She is part of the lung cancer and head and neck cancer teams at City of Hope, which is a world leader in the  and research of several serious diseases. The goal is providing patients with the opportunity to live longer and much better lives.
“For patients who have just been told they have cancer, I want them to know there is a place they can come, either for treatment or to get the best opinion,” Koczywas said. “At City of Hope, we have a great team of people where these patients can receive the best possible care.”
Koczywas is the principal investigator in several ongoing , including two specifically involving . She also is an outspoken advocate for combining  with cancer treatment programs early in the process.
She received her degree in 1984 from the Medical Academy of Lodz, in Lodz, Poland, then did a residency at St. Francis Medical Center in Pittsburgh. Koczywas first came to City of Hope for fellowships that included the Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research and the Department of Hematology/Bone Marrow Transplantation.

Christopher M. Walker, PhD, is director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunity at Nationwide Children's Hospital and holds the Wilby S. Cowan Endowed Chair in Pediatric Research.





 

Dr. Keith Eaton is an oncologist who specializes in treating patients with lung, thyroid, and head and neck cancers. He leads clinical trials that investigate immunotherapies like checkpoint inhibitors, which can take the brakes off a patient’s immune system, and targeted therapies that disrupt the ability of cancer cells to grow and spread from the primary tumor to other parts of the body. 




 

Medical Oncology Fellow at UTSW. Interested in lung cancer and immunotherapy research.