Mark E. Zafereo, M.D.

Mark E. Zafereo, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.  He is Section Chief of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery and Associate Medical Director of the Endocrine Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center.   Dr. Zafereo holds national committee appointments for the American Head and Neck Society, American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and he is a Past President of the Houston Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.  He has published extensively on Thyroid and other Head & Neck cancers, speaking nationally and internationally.  His clinical practice focuses on patients with thyroid cancer and parathyroid neoplasms.

David L. Steward, M.D. F.A.C.S. is a Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the Director of Head and Neck Surgery Division and Director of Parathyroid /Thyroid Surgery Program. He joined University of Cincinnati Physicians in July 1999. Dr. Steward received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1989 and his Medical Degree, General Surgery, and Otolaryngology residency training at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center (1994, 1995, and 1999 respectively). He also serves as Director of Clinical and Resident Research for the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center. His primary interest is in Thyroid and Parathyroid Disease. He holds a secondary appointment as Professor of the Division of Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine.

Robert C. Smallridge, M.D. has been a member of the Mayo Clinic staff in Jacksonville, Florida since February 1996. He has served as the Chair of the Division of Endocrinology, the Medical Director of the Clinical Studies Unit, the Director of Research, and as a member of the Board of Governors. His clinical practice is focused on thyroid disorders, and particularly thyroid cancer where he collaborates with colleagues in the Department of Cancer Biology on basic and translational studies and with the Division of Oncology on clinical trials. He received the Department of Medical Outstanding Research Award in 2010 and the Distinguished Mayo Clinician Award in 2013. He is a past president of the American Thyroid Association. Prior to joining Mayo Clinic, Dr. Smallridge retired as a Colonel after 23 years in the US Army Medical Corps. He served as the Director of the Department of Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as Chair of the Endocrinology Division at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and as the Endocrinology Consultant to members of the United States Congress.

Benjamin R. Roman, M.D., M.S.H.P. is a board-certified head and neck surgeon and health-services researcher. With his colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York. He practices a team approach and they are focused on achieving excellent results for their patients by helping them choose the best techniques and treatments for their individual circumstances and needs.

Gary L. Clayman, D.M.D., M.D., F.A.C.S., Thyroid Cancer Surgeon, is founder and director of Clayman Thyroid Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, an interdisciplinary program in partnership with Tampa General Hospital. Prior to founding Clayman Thyroid Cancer Center, Dr. Clayman spent 27 years as a head and neck endocrine surgeon at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. There, he served as the Distinguished Chair of Head and Neck Surgery and Chief of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery for 13 years.

Erik K. Alexander, M.D. is Chief of the Thyroid Section, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Alexander has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, mostly focused on the optimal evaluation of thyroid nodules and prevention of unnecessary thyroid surgery.  Seminal articles have published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Annals of Internal Medicine.   Dr. Alexander is a member of the 2016 American Thyroid Association Guideline Committee on the Care of Patients with Thyroid Nodules and Thyroid Cancer, and recently was co-chairman of a separate 2017 ATA Guideline on the Care of Patients with Thyroid Disease During Pregnancy.  Dr. Alexander is a past member of the ATA Board of Directors, and frequently speaks at National and International conferences on thyroid disease. He is an active clinician, caring for over 40 patients each week.

Ralph Tufano, M.D., M.B.A., F.A.C.S., is the Charles W. Cummings MD Endowed Professor in Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and the Director of the Division of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. From 2009-2015, he directed the Johns Hopkins Hospital Multidisciplinary Thyroid Tumor Center. His practice focuses exclusively on the surgical management of thyroid and parathyroid diseases. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters and is a national and international speaker on the management of thyroid cancer. His areas of research include novel therapies for thyroid cancer, clinical application of molecular markers, and improving surgical outcomes for patients with thyroid and parathyroid diseases.

Sareh Parangi, M.D. is a busy endocrine surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is dedicated to personalized care of patients with thyroid cancer. She focuses her clinical efforts on endocrine surgery and applies her basic science knowledge and expertise to tumor progression in thyroid cancer. She also has expertise in molecular biology and has published numerous articles. She has been a council member for The American Association of Endocrine Surgeons. She was a recipient of one of ThyCa’s Thyroid Cancer Research Grants. She has won numerous awards for her research on understanding the role of the BRAF oncoprotein, why some patients with thyroid cancer do worse than others, and how to help them. Her work in thyroid cancer details certain key genetic changes seen more frequently in those who do poorly, to help elucidate the role of these genetic changes in the aggressive behavior of those cancers and on clarifying the molecular mechanism of thyroid cancer invasion and understanding the process of disease progression in patients with thyroid cancer.

Ann W. Gramza, M.D., is an Oncologist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. She is formerly a Staff Clinician at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She focuses on translational clinical research studies of new treatments for patients with thyroid cancer. Dr. Gramza received her M.D. from The Ohio State University and completed clinical training in internal medicine and palliative care at the University of New Mexico, followed by fellowships in hematology and oncology at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU). She held faculty positions at OHSU and Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center prior to joining the NIH staff.

Ezra E.W. Cohen, M.D., Oncologist and internationally known translational researcher, is team leader in Head and Neck Oncology and the Solid Tumor Therapeutics research program at Moores Cancer Center, where he is also Associate Director for Translational Science and chair of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program. His research focuses on developing novel agents in head and neck and thyroid cancers as well as on immuno-oncology. He is Editor-in-Chief of Oral Oncology. He chairs the National Cancer Institute’s Head and Neck Cancer Steering Committee that oversees NCI-funded clinical research in head and neck cancer. Previously he co-directed the Head and Neck Cancer Program at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center. He chaired the two most recent international Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposia, has authored numerous papers, and has presented his research at national and international meetings. Dr. Cohen completed residencies in Family Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and completed a Hematology/Oncology fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he was named chief fellow.