Guest Faculty
Thoracic Surgery Division
Associate Professor
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota, USA
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Hiroshi Date MD
Professor and Chairman
Department of Thoracic Surgery
Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan
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Raja M. Flores MD
Chairman, Department of Thoracic Surgery
Mount Sinai Health System
Steven and Ann Ames Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, USA
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Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Thoracic Surgery,
Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, University of Montreal,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Marcel & Rolande Gosselin Chair in Thoracic Surgical Oncology
Director – CHUM Endoscopic Tracheobronchial and Oesophageal Center (CETOC)
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Prof. Olaf Mercier, MD, PhD
Professor of Thoracic Surgery and Director of the Innovation and Research Unit
Department of Thoracic and Vascular Surgery and Heart-Lung Transplantation
Marie Lannelongue Hospital
Paris Sud University, France
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Local Faculty
Canada Research Chair in Lung Transplantation
Surgical Director ECLS Program UHN
Associate Professor of Surgery,
Division of Thoracic Surgery, UHN
University of Toronto
Katarzyna Czarnecka-Kujawa MD, FRCPC, MPH
Respirology/Interventional Pulmonologist
Assistant Professor
Division of Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital, UHN
University of Toronto
Gail E. Darling MD FRCSC FACS
Professor Thoracic Surgery
Kress Family Chair Esophageal Cancer
University of Toronto
Chair Royal College Thoracic Surgery Specialty Committee Director Clinical Research in Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network
Jocelyne De Romana RN MN
Nurse Manager, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital, UHN
Laura Donahoe MD, FRCSC
Surgeon, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital
University Health Network
University of Toronto
Stephen Juvet MD PhD FRCPC
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Immunology
Affiliate Scientist
Toronto General Research Institute
Staff Physician
Toronto Lung Transplant Program
Multiorgan Transplant Program
University Health Network
University of Toronto
Shaf Keshavjee MD MSc FRCSC FACS
Surgeon-in-Chief, Sprott Department of Surgery, UHN
James Wallace McCutcheon Chair in Surgery
Director, Toronto Lung Transplant Program
Director, Latner Thoracic Research Laboratories
Professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery & Institute of Biomaterials
and Biomedical Engineering
Vice Chair Innovation, Department of Surgery
University of Toronto
Clinical Fellow
Interventional Thoracic Surgery
Division of Thoracic Surgery
University of Toronto
Tereza Martinu MD
Respirologist, Toronto Lung Transplant Program
Toronto General Hospital, UHN
Lianne G. Singer MD, FRCPC
Medical Director, Toronto Lung Transplant Program
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto
Toronto General Hospital
Jussi Tikkanen MD, PhD
Clinician-Investigator
Toronto Lung Transplant Program
University Health Network
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto
Thomas K. Waddell MD, MSc, PhD, FRCSC, FACS
Head, Division of Thoracic Surgery, UHN
FG Pearson – RJ Ginsberg Chair in Thoracic Surgery
Senior Scientist, Toronto General Research Institute
and McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine
Professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery
and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical
Engineering University of Toronto
Kazuhiro Yasufuku MD, PhD
Director of Endoscopy, University Health Network
Director, Interventional Thoracic Surgery Program
Associate Professor of Surgery, University of Toronto
Division of Thoracic Surgery, Toronto General Hospital
University Health Network
Jonathan Yeung MD, PhD, FRCSC
Surgeon, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital
University Health Network
University of Toronto
Marijana Zubrinic RN(EC), MScN, NP-PHC
Nurse Practitioner, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Toronto General Hospital, UHN
Thoracic Surgery Division
Associate Professor
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota, USA
Shanda H. Blackmon, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S., limits her practice to thoracic surgery, with a special interest in minimally invasive surgery and new technology. Dr. Blackmon completed college at The University of Texas in Austin where she worked as an artist painting for a year after college. She then went to Emory University Rollins School of Public health to obtain a Master’s degree followed by medical school at Morehouse in Atlanta, then followed by her residency in General Surgery at Georgia Baptist/Atlanta Medical Center. She then completed Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency at Baylor College of Medicine. She was awarded the Clinical Instructorship position in thoracic surgical oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, serving on the faculty until she was recruited to build an innovative Division of Thoracic Surgery at Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Blackmon was Chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Houston Methodist Hospital for eight years, serving as the Director of The Methodist Multidisciplinary Thoracic Tumor Board and Director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program. She has now joined 5 other surgeons at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, where she currently practices in the Division of Thoracic Surgery. She currently is the principal investigator or a co-investigator at Mayo Clinic in several clinical trials addressing mediastinal tumors, lung cancer, mesothelioma, esophageal cancer & diseases of the esophagus. She teaches regular courses on endoluminal techniques and VATS lobectomy. In addition to her experience with minimally invasive resections of lung and esophageal tumors, she specialized on endoluminal technology. She also holds a patent for innovating/design of an endoluminal buttressed anastomotic esophageal device which she is co-developing with Boston Scientific. She has developed a specialized team to reconstruct the esophagus with jejunum and leads an ablation team that has developed a novel approach to treating patients with lung tumors with three funded clinical trials. She is also a pioneer in three dimensional printing and building prototypes for complex thoracic resections using unique imaging modalities.
She is Board-certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. She is currently Associate Professor, Mayo Clinic, Division of Thoracic Surgery. She is a member of AATS, WTS, STS, STSA, ACS, AWS, SAGES, and GTSC.
She serves on the following boards or councils: TSFRE, STS, WTS, ATS, STSA, and the ACS Thoracic Advisory Council. Dr. Blackmon has published several professional papers and textbook chapters, edited many textbooks, and has made numerous scientific presentations on the topics of thoracic surgery, thoracic oncology, new technology, and minimally invasive surgery. She is a current Deputy Editor for The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
Professor and Chairman
Department of Thoracic Surgery
Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan
Hiroshi Date, MD is a Chairman and Professor, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Kyoto University.
He was trained by Drs Joel D Cooper and G Alexander Patterson at Washington University as a research (1989-91) and a clinical lung transplant fellow (1994-5). He also spent a year (1993-4) as a general thoracic fellow at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation directed by Dr Thomas W Rice. In 1998, he performed the first successful living-donor lobar lung transplantation in Japan. Since then, he has performed 204 lung transplants resulting in 70% survival rate at 10-years.
Dr. Date has authored more than 430 peer-reviewed publications in various fields of general thoracic surgery. He has performed more than 3,500 thoracotomies for lung cancer, mediastinal tumor, lung volume reduction surgery and lung transplantation, etc. He started his professorship from April 2006 at Okayama University. In October 2007, he was invited to Kyoto University as a chairman and professor, Department of Thoracic Surgery.
Chairman, Department of Thoracic Surgery
Mount Sinai Health System
Steven and Ann Ames Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, USA
Dr. Raja Flores is a prominent surgeon in the treatment of lung cancer, mesothelioma, esophageal cancer and non-malignant thoracic diseases. He is the Chairman of the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Ames Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Mount Sinai Health System, Icahn School of Medicine. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, he was an Attending Surgeon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Dr. Flores has published over 150 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals as well as numerous chapters in prestigious thoracic surgery textbooks. Dr. Flores was also a Guest Editor for the Thoracic Surgery Clinics Current Controversies in Thoracic Surgery.
Dr. Flores earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from New York University and attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, receiving his Medical Degree in 1992. He then spent five years at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center pursuing his General Surgery Internship and General Surgery Residency. He then completed a Thoracic Oncology Clinical Research Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute/CALGB in Boston, and his Cardiothoracic Surgery Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He also received a Masters in Biostatistics from Columbia University.
Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Thoracic Surgery,
Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, University of Montreal,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Marcel & Rolande Gosselin Chair in Thoracic Surgical Oncology
Director – CHUM Endoscopic Tracheobronchial and Oesophageal Center (CETOC)
Dr. Liberman completed medical school and general surgery residency at McGill University in Montreal. He also received a PhD in experimental surgery from McGill in 2008. After leaving McGill, Dr. Liberman completed a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts where he concentrated on complex airway surgery. He then completed two additional fellowships in interventional tracheo-bronchial endoscopy and interventional GI endoscopy.
Dr. Liberman joined the faculty at the University of Montreal in 2009 and established a comprehensive thoracic interventional endoscopy center. Dr. Liberman is a minimally invasive thoracic surgeon interested in interventional thoracic endoscopy, thoracic oncology and airway surgery. He is the Director of the CHUM Endoscopic Tracheobronchial and Oesophageal Center (C.E.T.O.C.).
His research interests include new minimally invasive techniques for staging and treatment of lung cancer and ultrasonographic technology in thoracic surgery. He also is currently evaluating Natural Orifice Trans-Lumenal Endoscopic Surgery in the treatment of thoracic malignancy and novel methods for performing VATS lobectomy. His research laboratory focuses on technology assessment and technology development in minimally invasive thoracic oncology and endoscopy.
Dr. Liberman’s Laboratory is funded through the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Fonds de Recherche en Santé du Quebec (FRSQ), the Society of University Surgeons (SUS), the Thoracic Surgery Research Foundation of Montreal as well as multiple collaborative research projects with industry.
Prof. Olaf Mercier, MD, PhD
Professor of Thoracic Surgery and Director of the Innovation and Research Unit
Department of Thoracic and Vascular Surgery and Heart-Lung Transplantation
Marie Lannelongue Hospital
Paris Sud University, France
Professor Olaf Mercier qualified as a professor in 2014. He is professor of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery and is currently the director of the Innovation and Research Unit of Marie Lannelongue Hospital. His research focuses on lung transplantation, lung perfusion, right ventricle dysfunction, and bioengineering, He teaches at the Paris Sud University School of Medicine and has been involved as investigator or co-investigator in clinical and research trials. He recently had been granted from the French Government for the development of an artificial lung. Since 2016, Professor Mercier has been appointed as President of the scientific committee of the French Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (SFCTCV).