Executive Committee

Diane Simeone, MD

Committee Chair

Principal Investigator and Executive Committee Chair

UC San Diego Health

Chugai Chair of Surgery & Director, Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCSD

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Fay Kastrinos, MD

Principal Investigator

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Associate Professor of Medicine, Director of the Muzzi Mirza Pancratic Cancer Prevention and Genetics Program and the Gastrointestinal Cancer Prevention and Genetics clinic.

Dr. Kastrinos is a practicing gastroenterologist with primary research and clinical interests in the genetics and prevention of gastrointestinal cancers, notably colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer. She has extensive experience in running clinical studies aimed at screening and early detection of these cancers and in the development of clinical risk assessment tools for routine use by healthcare providers.  Her research group developed the clinical prediction model, PREMM, a widely used web-based tool incorporated into current guidelines by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) for the risk assessment and prediction of mutations in the mismatch repair genes associated with inherited colorectal and endometrial cancers. She has been instrumental in the design and analyses of large-scale studies involving multiple national and international collaborators to improve genetic risk assessment and optimize surveillance strategies for inherited colorectal and pancreatic cancer. This includes studies focused specifically on Lynch syndrome and early-onset colorectal cancer through the International Mismatch Repair Consortium (IMRC) and Collaborative Group of the Americas for Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancers (CGA-IGC).   

Aimee Lee Lucas, MD, MS

Principal Investigator

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Professor of Medicine, Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Mount Sinai West & Mount Sinai Morningside Hospitals

Dr. Aimee Lee Lucas is Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside. Dr. Lucas’ clinical practice encompasses the full spectrum of digestive disorders and endoscopy, with particular interest in caring for patients with hereditary cancer syndromes and those at high-risk for developing gastrointestinal cancers, including pancreatic cancer.  Her research interest is in developing screening regimens to detect early pancreatic cancer and precancerous lesions in high-risk patients with family history of pancreatic cancer or genetic cancer syndromes. Her work has been published in numerous gastroenterology and oncology journals, and she is a recipient of research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and other non-profit organizations.

George Zogopoulos, MD, PhD

Principal Investigator

McGill University Health Center

Associate Professor of Surgery and Oncology

Dr. Zogopoulos is a physician-scientist whose lab studies the genetics and oncogenomics of pancreaticobiliary cancers. His research includes discovery of genetic associations with familial pancreatic cancer, and therapeutic opportunities for pancreaticobiliary cancers driven by homologous recombination deficiency. He established and directs the Quebec Pancreas Cancer Study (QPCS), a familial patient registry and biospecimen repository for pancreatic, biliary tract and peri-ampullary malignancies. He is the Pancreatic Disease Oriented Group co-Chair of the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG), and his research activities also include the pan-Canadian Pancreatic Cancer Profiling for Individualized Care (EPPIC) study, the Quebec Consortium for Novel Cancer Therapeutics and Biomarkers, and the Pancreatic Cancer Genetic Epidemiology (PACGENE) consortium.

Randall Brand, MD

Principal Investigator

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, Director of the GI Malignancy Early Detection, Diagnosis and Prevention Program.

Dr. Brand is an experienced endosonographer and physician-scientist with an extensive background in gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies, pancreatic diseases and biomarker development. Dr. Brand has a track record of successful subject enrollment and biospecimen collection and leads the University of Pittsburgh’s Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Gene-Environment Registry (PAGER). He is a principal investigator in the Early Detection Research Network and participates in multiple NCI-, NIH- and DoD-funded research projects focused on the early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and has been honored as a fellow of both the American Gastroenterological Association and American College of Gastroenterology.  Dr. Brand is the current president of the Collaborative Group of the Americas on Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancers, member of the NCI Pancreatic Cancer Task Force and national board member for the National Pancreas Foundation.  

Rosie Sears, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator

Oregon Health & Science University

Professor, Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, Oregon Health & Science University; Co-Director of the Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care, senior member in the Knight Cancer Institute.

Dr. Sears’ research expertise is in systems biology of cancer and includes cellular signaling pathways that control tumor cell phenotype and tumor stromal cell cross talk. Mechanistically, she focuses on the role of post-translational regulation of the MYC oncoprotein in the regulation of cell phenotypes and therapeutic resistance. She is working on novel strategies and technologies to detect pancreatic cancer earlier as well as precision cancer therapy using innovative patient-derived models of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Sears has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation, as well as several other private foundations. She has received both research and business innovation awards in the areas of cancer biology, therapeutics, and technology advancement. She is a member of the scientific and medical advisory board for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, and the scientific advisory board for Cancer Research UK’s Precision Panc clinical trials program.

Sonia Kupfer, MD

Principal Investigator

University of Chicago

Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic.  

Dr. Kupfer is an adult gastroenterologist with clinical and research interests in inherited gastrointestinal cancers and health disparities. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Section Chief for Education. Dr. Kupfer holds grants from the National Institute of Health to study colorectal cancer disparities. She has served as co-Director of several national clinical genetics conferences and is a core faculty member in the City of Hope cancer genetics educational program. Dr. Kupfer is Past-President of the Collaborative Group of the Americas on Inherited Gastrointestinal Cancer, and serves on several committees for the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA). She is the recipient of the Division of Biological Sciences Diversity and Inclusion Junior award, the Joseph B. Kirsner Mentorship Award, and the 2019 American Gastroenterological Association Young Investigator Award. 

Giovanni Parmigiani, PhD

Committee Chair of Biostatistics

Harvard University

Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Giovanni Parmigiani's is a statistician whose research investigates statistical principles and tools, often with a focus on understanding cancer data and improving decision making. He has a long term interest in helping families who are susceptible to inherited cancer understand their risk and make informed decisions. He uses Bayesian modeling and machine learning concepts to predict who is at risk of carrying genetic variants, and to integrate literature-based and other information about the effects of mutations (BayesMendel lab). Through his three-decade long experience implementing machine learning approaches in clinical activities, he identifed replicability across populations and heath systems as a key roadblock to rational use of machine learning in health. He is addressing the challenges of cross-study replication of predictions, by designing prediction approaches that learn replicability via training on multiple studies. He is the Associate Director for Population Sciences of the multi-institutional Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), and is the director of the postdoctoral training grant in Quantitative Sciences for Cancer Research at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His home is in the Department of Data Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

John Graff, PhD, MS

Research Scientist

Arbor Research Collaborative for Health

Dr. Graff has over 25 years of experience in conducting epidemiologic studies of cancer causes, control, and outcomes, with most of his research focusing on quality of care in newly diagnosed cancer patients and treatment outcomes well into their survivorship period. He served as a Principal and Co-Investigator at the State of New Jersey and Metropolitan Detroit NCI-funded SEER Registries, overseeing data collection, data access, data use, and population participation in numerous research studies.