Advisory Board

Douglas W. Blayney, MD is the Ann and John Doerr Medical Director of the Stanford University Cancer Center and a Professor of Internal Medicine. He is immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He came to Stanford after 7 years in a similar position at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; previously he was with Wilshire Oncology Medical Group in Pasadena, California, where he practiced for 17 years. Dr. Blayney has served on the FDA’s Oncology Drug Advisory Committee, as founding editor-in-chief of ASCO’s Journal of Oncology Practice, and was a founder of ASCO’s internet site, Asco.org. He has authored or coauthored over fifty peer reviewed journal articles, and co-edited one book. His current research involves measuring and improving quality of cancer care using information technology. Dr. Blayney received a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford, went on to the University of California, San Diego, from which he received his medical degree in 1977, and was an intern and resident in internal medicine at their University of California hospitals. He trained in oncology at the National Cancer Institute and is board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology.

Dr. Cobbs is currently the Director of the Ben and Catherine Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI) in Seattle. He is an international expert in brain tumor surgery and molecular biology. Dr. Cobbs received his clinical training at UCSF in 1997. From 1997-2005 he was Chief or Neurosurgery at the Birmingham VAMC and faculty at UAB from 1997-2005. From 2005-2013, he practiced neurosurgery at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), and ran a brain tumor research lab at CPMC Research Institute and UCSF in San Francisco. In 2013 he moved to his current position in Seattle, where he oversees the largest brain tumor clinical and research program in the Pacific Northwest at SNI, where they treat over 1000 patients with gliomas, PCNSL, meningioma, pituitary and metastatic tumors per year. As director of the Ivy Research Center, he supervises a laboratory with over 6 grant-funded brain tumor research projects. Dr. Cobbs’ own research investigates the potential role of cytomegaloviru in glioma pathogenesis and therapy.

Dr. Cobbs enjoys triathlons, rowing , skiing, and relaxing with his family.

Susan L. Cohn, MD, is a highly respected expert in pediatric cancers and blood diseases. She is a leading authority on neuroblastoma, a cancer of nerve cells, and the most common type of cancer found in infants. Dr. Cohn is actively researching several aspects of neuroblastoma. She is one of the few pediatric oncologists in the U.S. who is conducting phase I clinical trials of promising treatments for the disease. Her research has received generous support from the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

E. David Crawford is Clinical Professor of Urology at the University of California San Diego and
emeritus distinguished endowed Professor of Surgery, Urology, and Radiation Oncology, and
Head of the Section of Urologic Oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical
Campus in Aurora, Colorado. Dr. Crawford received his medical degree from the University of
Cincinnati. His postgraduate training included an internship and residency in urology at the
Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. He subsequently completed a genitourinary cancer
fellowship at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Dr. Crawford is an internationally-recognized expert in benign prostate hypertrophy, urologic
cancers, and in particular, prostate cancer. He has conducted research in the treatment of
advanced bladder cancer, metastatic adenocarcinoma of the prostate, hormone refractory
prostate cancer, and other areas of urological infections and malignancies. He has authored or
coauthored over 810 scientific articles, has published seven textbooks and authored over 60
book chapters. Dr. Crawford was Chairman of the Genitourinary Cancer Committee of the
Southwest Oncology Group for 28 years. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Prostate
Conditions Education Council which is responsible for screening nearly four million men for
prostate health issues and reaches more than 200 million people each year with education and
awareness information. Dr. Crawford has received many honors and awards, including the CaP
Cure Annual Award for Scientific Presentation and has twice been presented with a “Freddie
Award” at the AMA International Health and Medical Film Competition for best medical
documentaries. He has been recognized as one of the Best Doctors of America for the past two
decades, and is recognized as one of the top 20 urologists in the country, for men, by Men’s
Health Magazine. In 2018 he received the honor of being named the Distinguished Alumnus of
the Year from the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. In May of 2019, he received the
Presidential citation form the American Urological Association recognizing for his “tireless role in
genitourinary cancer research that has benefited countless urologic cancer patients.” He
accepted the position of Editor in Chief of Grand Rounds in Urology in June of 2019.

George Demetri, MD, is a leader in translational research aimed at understanding and treating precisely-defined subsets of cancers. He was a pioneer in the development of the imatinib (Gleevec) as one of the first examples of targeted cancer therapies focused on gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) as a molecularly-defined subset of sarcoma. Subsequently, his work has led to the FDA and worldwide regulatory approval of several other “smart drugs” for cancer, including sunitinib (Sutent) and regorafenib (Stivarga) for GIST, as well as pazopanib (Votrient) and trabectedin (Yondelis) for other sarcomas. In a related contribution, Dr. Demetri served on the Scientific Advisory Board for Plexxikon and was a critical member of the team which developed the first mutant BRAF inhibitor, vemurafenib (Zelboraf), as a mutation-targeted therapy for a subset of melanomas. He received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Harvard College, then was a research fellow at the Universite of Besancon, France before receiving his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine.  Subsequently, he completed residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington Hospitals in Seattle before training as a fellow in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, where he has served as an Attending Physician since 1989.

Dr. Demetri is now a Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School (HMS), where he is co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard and a co-director of the HMS Global Education post-graduate course entitled High Impact Cancer Research. In addition, he serves as an Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, the NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center consortium of Harvard University. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, he directs the Sarcoma Center and serves on the Institute’s Executive Leadership Team as the Senior Vice President for Experimental Therapeutics.

A former member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Dr. Demetri chairs the AACR Science Policy and Government Affairs Committee.  He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Blueprint Medicines and Translate Bio.

David E. Fisher, MD, PhD is a researcher, clinician, and academic, who is Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also serves as Director of the MGH Cutaneous Biology Research Center and Director of the Melanoma Center at MGH. Fisher’s research has focused on understanding the molecular and genetic events that underlie formation of melanoma as well as skin pigmentation. As a clinician, he has worked to translate these understandings into advances in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human diseases related to the skin and associated disorders. A graduate of Swarthmore College with a degree in Biology and Chemistry, Fisher is also an concert cellist and received a degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his PhD under Nobel Laureate Gunter Blobel at Rockefeller University and his MD at Cornell University Medical College. Fisher’s specialty training in medicine, pediatrics, and oncology were carried out at Harvard Medical School, followed by postdoctoral studies with Phillip Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research interests span examination of molecular events controlling mammalian gene expression and their integration into diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities focused on human disease.

Dr. Flaherty is Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  As described in the more than 300 peer reviewed primary research reports he has authored or co-authored, Dr. Flaherty and colleagues made several seminal observations that have defined the treatment of melanoma when they established the efficacy of BRAF, MEK and combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in patients with metastatic melanoma in a series of New England Journal of Medicine articles for which Dr. Flaherty was the first author.  Dr. Flaherty also has been a leader in assessing and identifying mechanisms of de novo and acquired resistance to BRAF inhibitor therapy and clinically evaluating next generation inhibitors, work that has had implications for resistance to targeted therapy regimens used to treat other malignant diseases.  He is the principal investigator of the NCI MATCH trial, the first NCI-sponsored trial assigning patients to targeted therapy independent of tumor type on the basis of DNA sequencing detection of oncogenes. He serves ECOG as chair of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee and in 2013 was appointed as ECOG Deputy Chair for Biomarker Science. Dr. Flaherty joined the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors in 2018 and AACR Board of Directors in 2019.  He serves as editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research.

Gilles Frydman is a pioneer of medical online communities. After working on government research programs involving telecommunication technology, he founded the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) [*] in 1995, after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. ACOR was designed to leverage the communication tools on the Internet to optimize the care received by cancer patients worldwide. A founding member of the Cook’s Branch Initiative (a group formed by the late Dr. Tom Ferguson to promote a model of active patient participation in their care) Gilles has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the online patient. He has served on a number of communication expert groups at the National Cancer Institute. He currently serves on a number of advocacy and advisory committees in support of patient-centered computing. He consults, with Google and other Internet corporations, about the importance of the networked patients and the central role of the Internet in the long tail of medicine. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Participatory Medicine and founding member and current president of the Society for Participatory Medicine. His current projects are all related to the role of online virtual environments to facilitate and improve healthcare and promote accelerated scientific discoveries. [* To this day ACOR, after serving over 650,000 cancer patients and caregivers, remains the largest online social network for cancer patients, composed of close to 200 separate online support groups for individuals with cancer.]

James Heywood is Co-Founder and Chair of PatientsLikeMe and d’Arbeloff Founding Director of the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI). As a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineer, Jamie entered the field of translational research and medicine when his brother Stephen was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1998 at the age of 29. Since that time, Jamie’s scientific and business innovations have been transforming the intersection of biotechnology and pharmaceutical development, personalized medicine, and patient care. As chair of PatientsLikeMe, Jamie provides the scientific vision and architecture for its patient-centered medical platform. He co-founded the company in 2005 with his youngest brother, Benjamin, and friend, Jeff Cole. Named one of “15 companies that will change the world” by CNNMoney, PatientsLikeMe is a personalized research and peer care platform that allows patients to share in-depth information on treatments, symptoms, and outcomes. In 1999, Jamie founded ALS TDI, the world’s first nonprofit biotechnology company, where he served as CEO until 2007. Pioneering an open research model and an industrialized therapeutic validation process, Jamie led ALS TDI to become the largest and most comprehensive ALS research program. A published author, frequent speaker, media pundit, and active investment advisor, Jamie speaks at conferences around the world, including TEDMED, Milken Global Conference, Gov 2.0, Personal Democracy Forum, Institute of Medicine, NIH Directors’ Lecture, and MGH Grand Rounds. Jamie’s work has been profiled in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, NPR, Science, and Nature, and he was named to WIRED’s 2009 “Smart List” and Fast Company’s “10 Most Creative People in Healthcare.” Jamie and his brother Stephen were the subjects of Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Wiener’s biography, His Brother’s Keeper and the Sundance award- winning documentary, “So Much So Fast.”

Dr. Stephanie Jeske is a hematologist/oncologist practicing for Sutter Health in the San Francisco office. She has a special focus on breast cancer and gynecologic malignancies (ovarian, cervical, and endometrial). Dr. Jeske attended Indiana University for both her undergraduate education and for medical school. She did her residency at University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine and her oncology training at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, in parallel with a Masters degree in Clinical Research. Prior to joining Sutter she was at the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara office, where she chaired the breast cancer program and was also instrumental in scaling clinical trials across the Kaiser system in Northern California. She remains active in clinical research, with an emphasis on breast cancer.

Kevin Knopf MD, MPH is Division Chief of Hematology/Oncology at Highland Hospital, Oakland
California and a practicing Hematologist/Oncologist. He is also a health economist and health
services researcher whose research focuses on cost-effectiveness, patterns and quality of care
in oncology, and health disparities in cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment. He trained at
the National Cancer Institute Medicine Branch and the Health Services and Economics Research
Branch after receiving an undergraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and his medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He
completed his clinical training at Northwestern Medical School, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
and received an MPH in Epidemiology and Statistics at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
He is currently Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco and
Associate Professor of Pharmaco-economics at the University of South Carolina School of
Pharmacy. Twitter : @drkevinknopf

Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD, is a professor of medicine in the University of Southern California (USC) Departments of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Scientific Director of the Cancer Genetics Unit and Director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program, and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz earned his MD degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 1991, he completed his internship, residency, and fellowship training at the Eberhardt Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He had special fellowship training at Universität Wien (Austria), George Washington University, and Harvard Medical School. In 1991, he received the prestigious Research Fellowship Award from the Deutsche Krebshilfe (German Cancer Aid) in Bonn, Germany. He completed his research fellowship in biochemistry and molecular biology at the USC/Norris Cancer Center before joining the faculty of USC in 1994. He was awarded a Career Development Award from STOP CANCER (1994-1997). Based on his research, he also received in 1994 a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). In 1995, Dr. Lenz was selected for the prestigious ASCO Career Development Award. The National Cancer Institute funded laboratory of Dr. Lenz has been interested in the identification and determination of molecular markers in precancerous and cancerous tissues that might predict for cancer risk and clinical outcome in gastrointestinal and breast cancer. Dr. Lenz is also the Institutional Principal Investigator on the UO1/NIH contract (California Cancer Consortium) in collaboration with City of Hope and University of California, Davis, which allows him to design innovative clinical trials with novel promising anticancer drugs.

Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, DSc (Hon), was Director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, a multidisciplinary research and clinical care organization that is one of the largest cancer centers in the Western U.S, and he was also Associate Dean of the UCSF School of Medicine. A native of Cambridge, England, Dr. McCormick received his BSc in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham (1972) and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge (1975). Postdoctoral fellowships were held in the U.S at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and in London, UK, at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He has been a fellow of the Royal Society since 1996. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. McCormick pursued cancer-related work with several Bay Area biotechnology firms, including positions with Cetus Corporation (Director of Molecular Biology, 1981-90; Vice-President of Research, 1990-91) and Chiron Corporation, where he was a vice-president of research from 1991-92. In 1992, he founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals and served as its chief scientific officer until 1996. Dr. McCormick’s current research interests center on the fundamental differences between normal cells and cancer cells that can allow the development of novel therapeutic strategies. In addition to the positions he has held at UCSF, he holds the E. Dixon Heise Distinguished Professorship in Oncology and the David A. Wood Distinguished Professorship of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research in UCSF’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Dr. McCormick is the author of more than 270 scientific publications.

At Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Orlowski holds the Florence Maude Thomas Cancer Research Professorship in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma, and also of Experimental Therapeutics, and serves as the Chair, ad interim, for Lymphoma/Myeloma. He obtained an MD from the Yale University School of Medicine and a PhD from Yale University Graduate School. Prior to arriving at MD Anderson, he was the Lenvel Lee Rothrock Associate Professor in Hematology/Oncology and Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Currently, Dr. Orlowski leads both laboratory- and clinically-based research programs studying hematologic malignancies, with a focus on multiple myeloma. Dr. Orlowski’s research has been recognized through receipt of a number of awards, including a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the Celgene Young Investigator Award for Achievements in Clinical Hematology Research. He has authored over 200 abstracts and publications, and serves as a reviewer on a number of study sections, and for several journals, including Blood, Cancer Cell, Cancer Research, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Petrylak completed his medical degree at Case Western Reserve University School of medicine, and completed his internal medicine residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Jacobi Medical center and fellowship at Memorial SloanKettering cancer center. He is currently Director of Genitourinary Oncology, and Co Director of the Signal Transduction Program at Yale University Cancer Center.

Dr. Petrylak is involved in clinical trials research on a local, national, and international level. He is the head of the advanced bladder subcommittee in the Southwest Oncology Group Genitourinary Committee. Dr. Petrylak served as PI or Co PI on 7 Southwest Oncology Group Protocols. Most notably, he served as the PI for a randomized trial comparing docetaxel and estramustine to mitoxantrone and prednisone in men with hormone refractory prostate cancer. This trial was one of two studies that demonstrated a survival benefit for docetaxel-based therapy in men with advanced prostate cancer. This trial supported the approval of docetaxel for hormone refractory prostate cancer by the FDA. He also help to design and served as principal investigator for the SPARC trial, an international registration trial evaluating the activity of satraplatin as a second line therapy for hormone refractory prostate cancer.

Dr. Petrylak is a recognized international leader in the field. He has served on the program committee for the annual meetings of the American Urological Association (2003-11) as well as for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (1995-7, 2001-3). He also has served as a committee member for the Devices and Immunolgicals section of the Food and Drug Administration. He has published extensively, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, as well as Cancer Research and Clinical Cancer Research.

Dr. Jerald Radich is a Member of the Clinical Research Division, the Director of the Molecular Oncology Lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is Chair of the Leukemia Translational Medicine Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group, Chair Emertitus of the NCI/NIH Leukemia Steering Committee, and is on the Board of Scientific Counselors, NIH Genome Research Institute. He is the Chair of the CML Committee of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a member of the European Leukemia Network CML committees, and is on the Scientific Board of the International CML Foundation and the Max Foundation. Dr. Radich’s laboratory work centers on the molecular biology of response, resistance, and progression in adult and chronic leukemia. He was awarded the International CML Foundation Award in 2017 for his lab’s work on diagnosing CML in the developing world.

Hope S. Rugo, MD, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she is also the Director, Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education. In addition, Dr. Rugo is a member of the ALLIANCE Breast Committee and the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium, is the UCSF representative to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines Committee, serves on several committees for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and is a voting member of the Advanced Breast Cancer Guidelines Consortium. With a summa cum laude undergraduate degree from Tufts University, Dr. Rugo received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She then completed both a residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology and oncology at UCSF with a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at Stanford University. An active researcher, Dr. Rugo has published many peer-reviewed papers and given presentations on a variety of breast cancer and supportive care-related topics. She is also an investigator and chair of the Safety Committee for the national multicenter ISPY2 trial, and is the principal investigator of a number of clinical trials. Her research interests include novel therapies for advanced breast cancer, immune modulation to restore chemotherapy sensitivity, evaluation of novel markers of response and resistance to therapy, neoadjuvant therapy, and supportive care. Dr. Rugo receives funding from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, is 2010 recipient of the Cancer Care Physician of the Year Award, and the PRIMO Women in Oncology Award and is a fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She is on the Steering Committees for several international clinical trials.

Laura van ‘t Veer received her MSc degree in Biology (1984) at the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Medicine (1989) at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. She did her postdoctoral training at the Cancer Center of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, (1989-1991) and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (1992-1993). From 1993 until 2007, she initiated and held the positions of head of molecular pathology and head of the Genetic Counseling Clinic at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. In 2003, she was one of the founders of the Netherlands Cancer Institute spinoff, the molecular profiling company Agendia. From 2007 to 2010, she became division head of diagnostic oncology, including clinical operations and research of five clinical departments. Since 2010, she is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she leads the Breast Oncology Program. Dr. van ‘t Veer is first author of a study showing that microarray genomics technology can predict which breast tumors will likely metastasize and which will not (Nature, 2002; NEJM, 2002). When these findings are implemented into daily clinical practice, the amount of so-called adjuvant treatments with chemotherapy for (premenopausal) breast cancer patients could be reduced by up to 30%. This microarray test now called MammaPrint, is central to the work of the translational research network TRANSBIG (Translational Research Breast International Group). The MINDACT trial is worldwide the first large-scale clinical trial implementing genomics. MammaPrint is an FDA-cleared in vitro diagnostic multigene index assay (IVDMIA), included in several international and national guidelines for breast cancer management. At UCSF, she coordinates the tissue and biomarker activities of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health-sponsored multicenter adaptive clinical trial I-SPY. Dr. van ‘t Veer received for this work the 2007 European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Lifetime Achievement Award for translational research in breast cancer.

John Wilbanks is Vice-President for Science at Creative Commons. He was previously a fellow at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences and founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research and development. Before moving into technology, he was the first assistant director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in U.S. politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark. John holds a BA in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He serves on the Board of Directors for Sage BioNetworks, DuraSpacem, and AcaWiki.

Dr. Wu is Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine. She received her Medical Degree from Trinity College in Ireland. She completed her residency at University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, and her fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2016, Dr. Wu was Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at The Ohio State University. A board certified medical oncologist, Dr. Wu specializes in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. Her research involves both translational and clinical studies, focusing on radiosensitizers for rectal cancer, analyzing colorectal cancers that carry microsatellite instable characteristics, and enhancing efficacy of immunotherapy in GI cancers.

Peter Yu is the 2014-2015 President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He is in clinical practice at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF), a multi-specialty medical group serving the San Francisco Bay area. Dr. Yu is Director of Cancer Research at PAMF and graduated from the combined undergraduate and medical school program in Medicine at Brown University. His residency was at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Medical Center in New York City where he was Chief Resident. After a fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical Center (NYC), Peter completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (NYC) in the laboratory of Dr. John Mendelsohn. He is board certified in both Medical Oncology and Hematology. He has served as president of the Association of Northern California Oncologists, chief of Medicine at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, member of the Board of Directors of Pathways Homecare and Hospice, and is a member of the Audit Committee of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology.

Peter is past-chair of the ASCO HIT Work Group. Past ASCO activities have included chair of the Clinical Practice Committee, member of the Cancer Research, Information Technology, Grant Selection, Audit, and Nominating Committees, chair of the Best of ASCO San Francisco 2005, chair of ASCO EHR Symposium 2009, Annual Meeting Educational Session Chair 2007, 2009 ,and 2010, and faculty of the Clinical Trials for the Community Oncology Team Workshop 2005.

He has also served as co-chair of the Commission for Certification of Health Information Technology (CCHIT) Oncology work group, co-chair of the AMA-RAND Clinical Decision Support Oncology work group under contract to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, co-chair of the ASCO-NCI CORE project, and has participated in several Institute of Medicine health information technology workshops.