Faculty

Ashwin Basavaraj, MD, FCCP, ATSF

Ashwin Basavaraj, MD, FCCP, ATSF is an Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Section Chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Bellevue Hospital Center. He is also an Associate Director of the Bronchiectasis and NTM Program at NYU Langone Health.

Dr. Basavaraj’s primary work has been focused on bronchiectasis and non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). He is co-director of the annual NTM symposium and NTM patient education programs at NYU Langone. Dr Basavaraj is involved in a number of active clinical trials on NTM, and has lectured nationally and internationally on the topic. Aside from his bronchiectasis work, Dr. Basavaraj is involved in clinical care seeing pulmonary patients both at NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospital.

Dr. Aakash Desai

MBBS, MPH is hematology and medical oncology fellow at MayoClinic, Rochester

His research focuses on evidence base in oncology, clinical trials, drug development, cancer care quality, healthcare delivery and global oncology. Dr. Desai received his medical degree from the prestigious B.J Medical College in Ahmedabad, India. He holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

Following this Dr. Desai completed his residency at the University of Connecticut. At the University of Connecticut, he also completed certification in Health Professions Education from University of Connecticut. Subsequently in 2020 he joined the fellowship program in oncology and hematology at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Desai received the 2021 Conquer Cancer Foundation ASCO Young Investigator Award and 2021 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Early Career Award. He has also received the Education award at the Targeted Therapies in Lung Cancer Conference 2022 (TTLC22), and the International Cancer Foundation scholarship for the ESMO Targeted Anticancer Therapies (TAT) 2022. Dr. Desai continues to focus on clinical and patient-oriented research in thoracic malignancies with a keen interest in drug development and clinical trials.

Nicolas Girard MD, PhD

Head of Thoracic Oncology; Institut Curie; Paris, France

Nicolas Girard is a pneumologist specializing in thoracic oncology, for the treatment of patients with lung cancer or rare thoracic cancers. He is experienced in the treatment of thymic tumors—thymomas and thymic carcinomas—as part of his work in the RYTHMIC network. He is domain leader for rare thoracic cancers for the European Reference Network EURACAN.

Nicolas Girard is involved in several clinical and translational research projects aiming at improving the treatment of these cancers. He is the Président of the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group. He is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Versailles Saint Quentin University. He is the Head of the Curie-Montsouris Thorax Institute.

Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS

Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care) and Preventive Medicine (Epidemiology); Feinberg School of Medicine; Northwestern University

Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS is Deputy Division Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Northwestern. He additionally serves as co-director of the Center for Education and Career Development in the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute.

Dr. Kalhan's research focus is in respiratory epidemiology. He leads large-scale epidemiologic cohort studies focused on lifecourse transitions from respiratory health to chronic lung disease. Central to this work is a framework that attempts to identify the components of ideal respiratory health, and thereby shifts the focus of the respiratory community from secondary to primary prevention of lung disease. Dr. Kalhan additionally participates in clinical trials centered on people living with asthma and COPD.

Antonio Passaro MD, PhD

Medical Oncologist, Division of Thoracic Oncology, European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy

Antonio Passaro, MD, PhD is a medical oncologist at the Division of Thoracic Oncology of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy. He received the PhD in molecular medicine with a thesis on lung cancer.

He is a clinician and translational researcher specialized in lung cancer. His main areas or research and clinical interest are predictive biomarker, in particular EGFR, and related target and immunotherapy agents, from discovery to validation in clinical setting. He is also strongly involved and interested in using target agents in non-metastatic setting, alone or in multimodality approach for early or locally-advanced disease. Dr. Passaro is involved in a portfolio of many clinical trials, sponsored and academic, investigating new anticancer agents. He is currently a Member of the ESMO Council, Chair of the Press & Media Affairs Committee, and a member of ESMO Lung Cancer Faculty. He is also an AIOM (Italian Association of Medical Oncology) board member for lung cancer guidelines. Author of several peer-reviewed manuscripts, he serves on the Editorial Board of different clinical cancer journals, and acts as reviewer for multiple lung cancer publications.

Sandip P Patel, MD

UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center

Sandip Patel is a Professor at UCSD and a Medical Oncologist focusing on early phase clinical trials of immunotherapy and thoracic oncology.

He is the leader for the Experimental Therapeutics (Phase 1) Program and Deputy Director for the Center for Precision Immunotherapy at UCSD. He is Director of the Clinical Trials Office at UCSD Moores Cancer Center. He is co-leader of the NRG Developmental Therapeutics Committee and co-leader of the University of California Lung Cancer Consortium.

Dr. Sudarshan Rajagopal, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACC

Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center

Dr. Rajagopal is an Associate Professor of Medicine with a secondary appointment in Biochemistry at the Duke University School of Medicine.

He co-directs the Duke Pulmonary Vascular Disease Center, where he provides care to patients across the spectrum of pulmonary hypertension, including pulmonary arterial hypertension and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. As a physician-scientist, the major goal of his research is to discover and characterize basic receptor regulatory mechanisms whose dysfunction can contribute to signaling abnormalities observed in cardiovascular and inflammatory disease. His NIH-funded research group uses a wide array of pharmacological, biochemical and physiological experiments in research on receptors in the cardiovascular system, specifically those involved in PAH.

Christina Thornton, MD PhD FRCPC

Division of Respirology, Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases; University of Calgary, Canada

Christina Thornton, MD PhD FRCPC is an adult respirologist in the Division of Respirology, Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary, Canada. Dr. Thornton is a clinician scientist specializing in cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis. She completed the MD/PhD program at the University of Calgary as part of the Leaders in Medicine program.

Her PhD thesis looked at the lower respiratory microbiome and microbial interactions in cystic fibrosis patients. She completed her internal medicine residency followed by respirology fellowship at the University of Calgary in 2021. Dr. Thornton then went on to the University of Michigan where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in advanced microbiome community analysis in cystic fibrosis patients. She is now an assistant professor as of Aug 2022 at the University of Calgary. Dr. Thornton runs a research lab with the key interests around the role of polymicrobial infections at times of clinical stability and pulmonary exacerbation in suppurative lung disease. She holds several research grants and has contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed publications. Her long-term career aspirations include development of a Canadian Bronchiectasis database for clinical data and sputum biobanking to better understand the role of the lung microbiome in these patients.

Shannon Turvey

Dr. Turvey is an Infectious Diseases consultant. Areas of clinical focus include Tuberculosis, Non-tuberculous Mycobacteria, and HIV. She is also a Clinical Associate Professor within the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Born in Burnaby, BC, she completed a B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University in Biology and Chemistry and then a thesis-based M.Sc. in Forest Ecology (2007) at the University of British Columbia before deciding to pursue medicine. In 2011, she obtained an M.D. from the University of British Columbia. She completed her Core Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases training at the University of Alberta in 2017, and she is board certified in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine in both Canada and the USA.

In 2019 she completed a Masters in Health Administration at the University of British Columbia. Her MHA capstone research project was quality improvement work focused on improving uptake of cervical cancer screening among women living with HIV infection in Alberta. She is also a Certified Health Executive through the Canadian College of Health Leaders. The CHE designation is the only health leadership designation in Canada, is aligned to the LEADS domains, and supports self-directed life-long learning through a formal maintenance of certification framework. From April 2020-June 2022, she was the Medical Director for the Northern Alberta Program which provides centralized longitudinal multidisciplinary HIV care to approximately 2,400 patients in Northern Alberta. In July 2022 she took on a new role as an Infectious Diseases consultant with Vancouver Coastal Health at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) with a focus on the clinical care of people living with mycobacterial infections and those living with HIV. In addition to her clinical Infectious Diseases work and outpatient HIV work, she is an attending on the Tuberculosis inpatient ward at VGH and holds a dual appointment at the BC Centre for Disease Control where she provides outpatient TB care, participates in TB clinic process review, and is active in research recruitment. Her core interests are Quality Improvement, program monitoring, collaborative interdisciplinary initiatives to generate new models of care, and the use of information technology to enhance quality of care and inform existing care through access to clinically meaningful real-time local data. She is passionate about mentorship and sponsorship of other women in medicine, and care of marginalized populations.

Jean-Luc Vachiéry

Jean-Luc Vachiéry is Clinical Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Pulmonary Vascular Diseases and heart Failure Clinic at the Hôpital Erasme, academic hospital of the Free University of Brussels Belgium. He received his board certification in Internal Medicine in 1992 and in Cardiology in 1995. Jean-Luc has authored several manuscripts on pulmonary vascular disorders (H- index 51) and is section editor for the Journal of heart and lung transplantation. Jean-Luc has focused on advanced cardiac and pulmonary vascular diseases since 1995. He created and leads the PH and HF Clinic at the Erasme Academic Hospital since 2008. Over the years, he has mentored many medical students for their thesis and supervised several PhDs in the field of PVD.

Jean-Luc has been active in several scientific societies, with leadership positions. At the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), he chaired the Pulmonary Hypertension Council (2002 – 2005, 2018 -2020), and is a member of the interdisciplinary network on PVD. At the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), JL chaired the Working Group on Pulmonary Circulation and Right Ventricular Function (2006 – 2008), was member of the Nucleus until 2020 and now member-at-large. He was a Task Force member and section editor of the European Guidelines on pulmonary Hypertension (2009, 2015 and 2022). Jean-Luc has also been involved in the World Symposium on PH as task force member in 2003 (Transplantation and atrial septostomy), co-chair of the PH due to heart and lung diseases task force in 2013 and was chair of the Task Force on PH due to left heart diseases in 2018. He is member of the scientific steering committee of the World Symposium on PH Association. Jean-Luc’s center is also founding member of the European Reference Network (ERN) – Lung, PH, where he is part of the Research and Guidelines subcommittee. Jean-Luc acts as expert for regulatory agencies and scientific organizations for matters related to medicines and care of PH.

Jason Weatherald

Jason Weatherald is a pulmonologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. He serves as Research Director for the Pulmonary Vascular Disease program at the University of Calgary and is a member of the Canadian Pulmonary Hypertension Registry steering committee and sits on the Medical Advisory Committee at the Pulmonary Hypertension Association of Canada. He is an Associate Editor at the European Respiratory Journal and is on the editorial board for the European Respiratory Journal and Respiratory Medicine journal. Dr. Weatherald completed his undergraduate education at McGill University, followed by an MD and Internal Medicine residency training at the University of Alberta. He completed his Respiratory Medicine fellowship training at the University of Calgary. He then received an European Respiratory Society long-term research fellowship to study pulmonary vascular diseases under the supervision of Prof. Marc Humbert and Prof Olivier Sitbon in Paris, France from 2016-2017. He subsequently completed a Canadian Vascular Network-Bayer research fellowship to study pulmonary arterial wave intensity analysis in patients with pulmonary hypertension with Dr. John Tyberg in Calgary. He completed a Masters of Science in Clinical Trials from the University of London - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2019. His research involves risk assessment methods in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Currently, he holds research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, The Lung Association, and the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada. Since 2016, he has authored over 75 publications and has an h-index of 19. He recently received the Todd Anderson Cardiovascular Research Award for outstanding contributions as an early career investigator and was recognized by Avenue Magazine as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in the city of Calgary.

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