Executive Committee

Professor Caicun Zhou joined the IASLC Board of Directors in 2019 and is the current President. He serves on the association’s Tobacco Control and Cessation Committee and Education Committee from 2010-2014.

With more than 20 years of experience in clinical oncology, Professor Zhou has focused his research on early detection, molecular targeted therapy, anti-angiogenesis therapy and immunotherapy in lung cancer. Since 1998, he has served as Chief Physician and Director of the Department of Medical Oncology at Tongji University in Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital. Prior to his work at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, he served as Associate Director at Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College.

Professor Zhou has published over 200 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including the Lancet Oncology, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Annals of Oncology, and he has written three books on lung cancer. In 2002, he worked as a visiting scientist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He studied medicine at NanTong Medical College, earned his Ph.D. at China Medical University, and served as a fellow at Tokyo National Chest Hospital.

Dr. Paul Van Schil joined the IASLC Board of Directors in 2017 and has served as Chair of its Staging and Prognostic Factors Committee since 2017. He is now the Past President of the IASLC. 

Dr. Van Schil is a professor of thoracic and vascular surgery at the Faculty of Medicine, a member of the Antwerp Surgical Training and Research Center (ASTARC), and a consultant at the Department of Thoracic and Vascular Surgery of the Antwerp University Hospital.
His research focuses on thoracic and vascular surgery with an emphasis on lung cancer staging and therapy, lung metastases, and mesothelioma. Dr. Van Schil has authored or co-authored nearly 250 articles and 44 book chapters. Dr. Van Schil graduated from medical school in 1982 at Antwerp University in Belgium. After completing his training in general surgery, he became a fellow in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands.

Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, is the Chief of the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute and holds the M. Frank Rudy and Margaret D. Rudy Distinguished Chair in Translational Cancer Research at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Adjei has had leadership roles in the National Cancer Enterprise of the US, serving in multiple roles and on several National Cancer Institute (NCI) committees. He was the Chair of the NIH Study Section NCRR reviewing CTSAs, a member of the Clinical Oncology Study Section (CONC), and the NCI IRG Subcommittee A, which reviews Cancer Centers. He was the Lung Committee Chair and Group Vice Chair of the NCCTG. He co-chaired the Clinical Trials Design Task Force, and the Thoracic Malignancies Steering Committee for two terms and co-chaired the SCLC Progress Review Group. He has chaired an external review panel for the NCI intra-mural thoracic and GI malignancies branch and has served on the Committee on Diagnosing and Treating Adult Cancers of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He is a member of the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors, a former member of the Board of Directors of the IASLC, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. He has served on numerous committees in AACR, ASCO and ESMO. His research focuses on experimental therapeutics and clinical drug development. He received the first ASCO Drug Development Research Professorship in recognition of his mentorship and work in cancer drug development. He also received the inaugural IASLC Adi F. Gazdar Merit Award for Distinguished Service in Lung Cancer in 2020 and the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. He has authored over 300 publications, primarily dealing with preclinical pharmacology, phase I trials, and novel therapies for lung cancer. 

Dr. Ignacio Wistuba is Professor and Chair of the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology with joint appointment in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology (THNMO) and co-director of the Khalifa Institute of Personalized Cancer Institute at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA. He obtained his medical doctorate from Universidad Austral, Valdivia, Chile (1985), and completed surgical pathology training at Catholic University, Santiago, Chile (1989). Then, he trained for nearly five years as a post-doctoral research fellow in lung cancer molecular pathology at the Hamon Cancer Center at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, USA, under the mentorship of Drs. Adi Gazdar and John Minna (1994-1999). After spending five years in Chile as a professor of pathology at Catholic University Medical School, Dr. Wistuba joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2003 in the departments of Pathology and THNMO to lead a lung cancer molecular pathology program. His major research interest is the elucidation of the molecular abnormalities involved in the pathogenesis and progression of lung cancer and the development of predictive biomarkers for targeted and immune-oncology therapies.

He has co-authored over 750 papers in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters. He is the principal investigator (PI) and co-PI on several molecular pathology and biomarker projects supported by multi-investigators and multi-institutional grants and research agreements in thoracic malignancies. Dr. Wistuba has been highly involved in IASLC activities for the last 17 years by serving as a member of various committees, including the Pathology Committee that he chaired from 2017-2020. Since moving to the United States in 2023, Dr. Wistuba has participated as a member of scientific organizing committees, speaker, and attendee to all WCLC and LALCA meetings and several regional IASLC meetings. He received IASLC's Mary J. Matthews Pathology/Translational Research Award in 2018. 

Professor Benjamin Solomon is a medical oncologist and head of the lung medical oncology service at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Following his training in medical oncology, he was a recipient of an IASLC fellowship in 2004 and proceeded to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado under the supervision of Professors Paul Bunn and Fred Hirsch. He returned to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2006, where he heads the Lung Medical Oncology Service and is a Group Leader of the Molecular Therapeutics and Biomarkers Laboratory in the Research Division. His clinical trial work focuses on the identification of novel therapies for lung cancer, including novel targeted therapy and immunotherapy approaches. He has been involved in practice-changing clinical trials with novel inhibitors of ALK, ROS1, NTRK, BRAF, cMET, RET, and KRAS, including pivotal trials leading to registration of drugs including crizotinib, ceritinib, lorlatinib, repotrectinib, and selpercatinib.

He has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has been recognized as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). He is a founding board member of the Thoracic Oncology Group of Australasia (TOGA) and is a Board Member of the Cancer Council of Victoria. He has served on several committees for the IASLC, including the fellowship committee, and was chair from 2016-2018. 

Dr. Kelly is the CEO of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the only global network dedicated to the study and eradication of lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies. She is an internationally recognized lung cancer expert dedicated to providing enhanced cancer care through cutting-edge clinical trials. Her research spans the spectrum of this disease from prevention to treatment. Dr. Kelly is widely published, and she frequently lectures on lung cancer topics, nationally and internationally. Dr. Kelly is a long-standing active member of IASLC, ASCO, and SWOG. She served as the SWOG Lung Committee Chair from 2016 until 2022.

Dr. Kelly earned her medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine. She completed her internal medicine residency and oncology fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Kelly was appointed faculty at the University of Colorado where she spent many years building her academic career in thoracic oncology prior to accepting a faculty appointment at the University of California, Davis where she held the Jennifer Rene Harmon Tegley and Elizabeth Erica Harmon Endowed Chair in Clinical Cancer Research and was the Associate Director for Clinical Research for their NCI designated comprehensive cancer center.