Dr. Robert James (RJ) Cusimano is a cardiac surgeon, Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Program Director, Cardiac Surgery Residency Programme, University of Toronto and Associate Professor, Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto. A native of Toronto and the third of eight children, Dr. Cusimano earned his medical degree from the University of Calgary in 1983, interned in the Atlantic Canadian provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), before completing his Residency in General Surgery, and Cardiac Surgery at the University of Toronto.
He became a staff surgeon at the Toronto General Hospital in 1993 – the first Canadian of Italian heritage to achieve this status.
In 2006, Dr. Cusimano was invited to teach cardiac surgery at Xingxiang Medical University in China — becoming the first non-Chinese physician to do so. The surgical procedure was televised to 100 million people in China. Dr. Cusimano was awarded an honorary degree from Xingxiang University for his work. He has since made return visits to China to continue teaching cardiac surgery techniques used at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre.
Dr. Cusimano is the longest-serving member of Toronto General Hospital’s heart transplant team, a position he has held since 1993. As such, he has performed more heart transplants than any other adult surgeon in Toronto.
He is a recognized specialist in Insertion, modification and removal of cardiac rhythm management devices.
He is also an active member of the ventricular assist program at the Toronto General Hospital, focused on providing heart disease patients with a ‘bridge to transplant’ cardiac-assist device, or mechanical heart technology, like the Left Ventricular Assist Device or LVAD, and Transcatheter Valve therapies.
In 2016, Dr. Cusimano led a first international conference on cardiac tumours — an increasingly common heart condition – which can often be fatal. The Toronto Cardiac Tumour Conference was created to share knowledge and best practices about the diagnosis, treatment and management of these little-known, —- benign or malignant tumours of the heart.

Michael Farkouh is the Peter Munk Chair in Multinational Clinical Trials at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Director of the Heart and Stroke/Richard Lewar Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research, Professor and Vice-Chair, Research, Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
He is a graduate of the Schulich School of Medicine at Western University. Dr. Farkouh completed his internal medicine and cardiology training at the Mayo Clinic and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York respectively and holds an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology from McMaster University. Prior to his current appointments, he served as the founding director of the Mount Sinai Cardiovascular Clinical Trials Unit in New York City.
Dr. Farkouh is internationally known for his work on the management of acute coronary syndromes in the emergency room. He has a special interest and expertise in the field of cardiovascular disease in diabetic patients. He is currently the project officer for numerous clinical trials on questions related to diabetes and heart disease including the NIH-sponsored FREEDOM trial.
He chairs the committee on diabetes and heart disease at the Banting and Best Centre and at the University of Toronto. Dr. Farkouh has received the Gold Medal from John Paul II Hospital in Krakow, was elected Teacher of the Year at the Mayo Clinic, and was awarded the Jan J. Kellermann Memorial Award for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention from the International Academy of Cardiology. Dr. Farkouh serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Dr. Abha Gupta received her MD at the University of Toronto. She completed her pediatrics residency at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital (New Haven, CT) and Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (Ottawa) before moving back to Toronto to complete her fellowship in paediatric hematology/oncology at The Hospital for Sick Children. To complement her training, Dr. Gupta completed a one-year fellowship in Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology with a focus on sarcoma. She is currently cross appointed as a staff oncologist at both The Hospital for Sick Children and Princess Margaret Hospital. Dr. Gupta’s primary clinical and research interests include sarcoma, adolescent and young adult oncology and desmoid tumours. She is the Medical Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program at Princess Margaret. Here she is working with a team of people to create the infrastructure to ensure consistent and high quality delivery of information and services to young people with cancer. Dr. Gupta is also the founding medical director of CanSaRCC, the Canadian Sarcoma Research and Clinical Collaboration, and is interested in clinical trials for sarcoma and desmoid.

Dr. Khalil Jawad was born in Lebanon, moved to Germany after highschool. He completed his medical training at the Charité University of Medicine, Berlin Germany. He completed his internship and residency at Leipzig Heart Center, University of Leipzig, where he is still under contract as a specialist for cardiac surgery.

He started a clinical fellowship at Toronto General Hospital with a special focus on mechanical circulatory support and heart transplant.

His major research interest is beneath primary cardiac tumors the ubiquitin proteasome system as a potential therapeutic target for heart failure. 2018, Dr. Jawad defended his thesis on primary heart tumors.

He is an active member of the European association for cardiothoracic surgery and the international society of heart and lung transplant.

Robin Jones is a medical oncologist with a specialist interest in bone and soft issue sarcomas. He has been principle investigator on numerous phase I, II and III trials.

He completed his medical training at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, and his oncology training at The Royal Marsden. His postgraduate research degree, with Professor Dowsett at the ICR, evaluated potential predictive and prognostic factors in breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

In January 2010 he was appointed Associate Professor and Director of the Sarcoma Program at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He led a successful clinical and research program.

He is Consultant Medical Oncologist and Reader at the Royal Marsden and ICR. He is currently working on a number of trials of investigational agents in sarcomas as well as laboratory-based studies with Dr Paul Huang. With Dr Huang and Professor Shipley he has established the Joint Royal Marsden / ICR Sarcoma Research Center.

Dr. Azad Mashari is Director of the Lynn and Arnold Irwin Advanced Perioperative Imaging Lab (APIL) and staff Anesthesiologist at the Peter Munk Cardiac Center, Toronto General Hospital. He completed his training in Cardiovascular Anesthesia and Perioperative Echocardiography at Toronto General Hospital and completed a research fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University, focusing on 3D echocardiography, 3D modeling and Printing. His undergraduate training focused on cognitive science and artificial intelligence. APIL’s work focuses on perioperative clinical and educational applications of medical imaging (primarily 3D echocardiography, CT and MRI), especially the use of 3D models created from imaging data for procedural training and planning of complex surgical and minimally invasive procedures.

Dr. Vinod Ravi is an Associate Professor, Department of Sarcoma Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine. He is also the Clinical Director, Translational Research Accelerator Program, Department of Genomic Medicine, Division of Cancer Medicine, and holds a joint adjunct appointment as an Associate Professor, Department of Genomic Medicine, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer.Dr. Ravi’s clinical practice is focused on vascular sarcomas such as angiosarcoma and epithelioid hemangioendothelioma. Dr. Ravi is also part of the angiosarcoma and leiomyosarcoma working groups at MD Anderson to efficiently utilize the current moonshot platforms to improve outcomes in these rare diseases. Over the course of the last 8 years that he has been at MD Anderson, he has conducted several phase II and III studies in patients with sarcoma. His clinical research interests are in the development of novel therapies for angiosarcoma and other vascular tumors.
From a data science standpoint, his research focus is utilization of multi-dimensional clinical and molecular data for identification of effective molecular therapies. Dr. Ravi is interested in correlating responses to specific targeted therapies with molecular predictors to improve clinical trial efficiency and success rates. As the clinical director of TRA (Translational Research Accelerator) program, Dr. Ravi leads the implementation of big data initiative that connects molecular data on patient samples with clinical and radiological information from electronic records.

Dr. Abdul Razak is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Clinically, he is a Staff Medical Oncologist in Phase 1 Clinical Trials and Sarcoma at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Sinai Healthcare Systems, Toronto. He also leads the Medical Oncology Sarcoma Program at both institutions.
Originally from Malaysia, he underwent medical and oncology training in Ireland, England as well as Canada. He was the recipient several international awards, to include the Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2011), Merit Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation (2011) as well as the Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Award from the British Lung Foundation (2007). Nationally, Dr. Abdul Razak was also the inaugural recipient of the Sarcoma Cancer Foundation of Canada Fellowship (2013). Locally, his work was recognized by the McCullough and Till Paper of the Year Award (2017).
Dr. Razak’s main interest is new drug development, especially in the field of sarcoma. He has authored several high impact publications such as Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research and Cancer. He was also the author of the oncology chapter for Davidson’s Textbook of Medicine (23rd and 24th edition).
Dr. Razak has trained several of the next generation of sarcoma oncologists from various parts of the world to include Saudi Arabia, Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Australia and Jordan. These fellows since then has formed their own alumni and launched their own successful collaborations. Dr. Razak also has been integral in connecting and training the next generation of drug developers from Ireland and Malaysia within his role at the Drug Development Program at the Princess Margaret.
Socially, Dr. Razak enjoys spending time with his family. He is the father of two young children whom he spends much of his free time with.

Dr. Shultz is as a clinician investigator in the Radiation Medicine Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto. His clinical expertise is in sarcomas, brain tumors, and spinal metastases and his research focuses on biomarkers of radiation-induced treatment response and injury.

Brian Andrew Van Tine, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, where he is the Sarcoma Program Director at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center. Dr. Van Tine received his Bachelors of Science degree from the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Arizona in 1995.

Dr. Van Tine completed his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2005. His thesis research mainly focused on the role of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in the development of cervical cancer with Profs. Louis T. Chow and Thomas R. Broker. After completing his M.D., Ph.D., Dr. Van Tine came to Washington University in St. Louis/Barnes Jewish Hospital where he did his Internal Medicine Residency and Medical Oncology Fellowship.

He joined the laboratories of James J.D. Hsieh, M.D., Ph.D. and then Matthew Ellis, M.B., B.Chir., Ph.D., where he pursued his postdoctoral fellowship studying mouse genetics and genomics and tumor xenografting while clinically specializing in the treatment of sarcoma. His laboratory is dedicated to understanding the metabolism of sarcoma, and has recently developed a duel metabolic therapy for the treatment of complex cytogenetic sarcomas based on the exploitation of argininosuccinate synthetase 1 deficiency and glutaminase inhibition.

Dr. Geoffrey Watson completed his medical training at the 2nd Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague. He completed his internship and residency at St. Vincent’s Univeristy Hospital, Dublin, Ireland in 2015. He began specialized training in medical oncology at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and was accepted onto the Higher Specialised Training Scheme in Medical Oncology in 2016.

He continued his training in Ireland at University Hospital Limerick, St. James’s Hospital and Galway University Hospital. In 2019 he was accepted as clinical research fellow in the Drug Development and Sarcoma Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Canada.

He is a member of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and also received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 2004 at University College Dublin, Ireland as well as a Masters degree in Pharmacological Bioinformatics in 2010. His major research interest is in sarcoma, melanoma and cancer immunotherapy and he is the author or co-author of 18 research publications to date.