Nominating Committee

Professor Caicun Zhou joined the IASLC Board of Directors in 2019 and is the current President-elect. 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.

Joining the Board of Directors in 2015, Dr. Heather Wakelee is a longtime IASLC member and is now the past president. She has served as Chair of the Communications Committee and has worked for more than a decade on various program committees for the World Conference on Lung Cancer.

Dr. Wakelee is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology at Stanford University and is the faculty director of the Stanford Cancer Clinical Trials Office. She has authored or co-authored over 200 articles on lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies, including thymic malignancies, and is involved in dozens of clinical trials related to lung cancer therapy and diagnostics.

Her research focuses on specific lung cancer subtypes defined by mutations. She is also involved in trials of adjuvant therapy, immunotherapy and anti-angiogenesis agents in addition to collaborations with colleagues focused on biomarkers and population science research.

A graduate of Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Wakelee completed her post-graduate training at Stanford University.

Dr. Joachim Aerts is a board-certified pulmonologist with a special interest in thoracic oncology. He began his training as a pulmonologist in 1997 and became a board-certified pulmonologist in 2002. He subsequently worked in two teaching hospitals, during which he was appointed at the Erasmus University Rotterdam to organize and supervise the comprehensive cancer network in the southwest of The Netherlands and the basic, translational, and clinical research in oncology. He was appointed as professor of thoracic oncology in 2014 at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 2018 he became head of the Department of respiratory medicine at the Erasmus University Medical Centre and, in 2021, division chair of the Department of respiratory medicine, cardiology, and thoracic surgery. 

During his professional career, Dr. Aerts has been heavily involved in many research projects and has initiated different basic, translational, and clinical studies, leading to over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He has supervised over 20 PhD students. Dr. Aerts is active in major scientific societies, both national and international, the IASLC, ASCO, ESMO, ERS, and ATS, and is frequently invited as a speaker and member of organizing committees. He is a member of the board of directors of the IASLC.

Dr. Chang is a thoracic radiation oncologist with more than 30 years of experience with clinical care and research focusing on lung cancer. He holds a tenured Texas 4000 Distinguished Professorship and is Director of Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Radiation Oncology and has been recognized with the Best Doctors of America award. He is a voting committee member of NCCN thoracic guidelines and co-chair of the international particle therapy PTCOG scientific program committee. As one of the pioneers in the field of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR, or SBRT: stereotactic body radiation therapy), proton therapy, and immunotherapy for lung cancer, he published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals, including LANCET, Nature, JAMA, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, RED J, Green J, and various others. His prospective studies including randomized studies comparing surgery vs. SABR in operable stage I lung cancer, stereotactic proton vs. photon radiotherapy in challenging early-stage lung cancer, immunotherapy plus SABR (I-SABR) vs. SABR alone in early-stage lung cancer were the first reported studies in the world. He led the first concurrent proton therapy and chemotherapy in stage III lung cancer, and his team implemented the first intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) in lung cancer. His research has helped to establish the role of SABR, proton therapy, and I-SABR in lung cancer. Additionally, on behalf of national and international societies, including the IASLC ART committee, he has led several important consensus statements that have significantly impacted the radiation oncology community about SABR, proton therapy in lung cancer, IMPT in moving thoracic cancers, management of small cell lung cancer, oligometastasis, and re-irradiation of thoracic cancer. 

Dr. Sequist is originally from Michigan and studied chemistry at Cornell University. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she also received an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She joined the faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in 2005 and has an active clinical and translational research career, as well as a busy practice caring for patients with lung cancer. She is currently the Landry Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has held grants from the NIH, the DOD, and many private foundations. Dr. Sequist’s research focuses on studying targeted therapeutics for lung cancer and novel technologies to detect cancer earlier. In her free time, she likes to spend time with her husband, two sons, and her dog, read and travel. 

Dr. Tsao is a Consultant Pathologist, Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. He is Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, and Professor of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on understanding the genomic and molecular abnormalities in lung cancers to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Tsao has made seminal contributions to the molecular characterization of lung cancer. His laboratory was one of the first to define molecular markers for patient selection towards treatment with targeted anti-cancer drugs, and defined gene signatures for outcome prediction of non-small-cell lung cancer patients. More recently, His laboratory has pioneered the establishment and characterization of patient-derived tumor models for lung cancer.  Dr. Tsao is Chair of the Correlative Science and Tumor Biology Committee of the Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Group (CCTG), member and past Chair of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Pathology Committee, the IASLC Staging & Prognostic Factor Committee, and a Standing Member of the Editorial Board for the WHO Books on Classification of Tumours 5th edition. He was an Associate Editor for the Journal of Thoracic Oncology and Editorial Board member of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Tsao received the 2011 Canadian Cancer Society O. Harold Warwick Award, the 2016 IASLC Mary Matthew Pathology Award, and CCTG 2017 Dr. Joseph Pater Founder's Award for Excellence in Clinical Trials Research. In 2020, Dr. Tsao was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 

Dr. Quist is an associate professor at the Copenhagen University and a Physiotherapist clinician-researcher with 20 years expertise in exercise for patients with cancer at the University Hospital of Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet). He is the co-founder of the “body and Cancer” and founder of the EXHALE program.  He received a PhD from The University of Copenhagen in 2015 on the topic of Exercise and Advanced Stage Lung Cancer.  Dr. Quist’s research area is exercise and lung cancer in all stages (early and advance) and in different treatment modalities (diagnostic, surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy). His focus is to prepare patients for treatment, optimizing functional capacity, and maintaining or improving quality of life.

Dr. Quist served on the board of directors of the Danish Lung Cancer Group in 2017 and was responsible for developing guidelines for rehabilitation in lung cancer in Denmark. He has been a member of the IASLC Nurses and Allied Health Professionals Committee since 2017.   

In addition to research, Dr. Quist co-founded and co-created two exercise communities in Denmark (Proof of Life and PACT) for cancer survivors and patients with cancer. Proof of life is an exercise community for young cancer survivors and PACT (physical activity after cancer treatment) is an exercise community for cancer patients. He received the Danish Cancer Society honor award in 2015 for his voluntary work to keep patients with cancer active, and in 2017 received the IASLC Nursing and Allied Health Lectureship Award.

Dr. Paula Ugalde graduated in 1995 and by 2000 completed training in thoracic surgery in Brazil. She did her postdoctoral research and obtained a master’s degree in 2004 when she became an assistant professor at the Federal University of Bahia Medical School. For the next 3-years, Dr. Ugalde completed a fellowship in Thoracic Surgery at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, and in 2007-2008, a Thoracic Surgery Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In 2013, she was recruited back to Quebec and began as an associate professor at Laval University. She was soon named director of the Thoracic Oncology research program. 

Dr. Ugalde established herself as a thoracic surgeon dedicated to research with an extensive record of publications, including a body of work on thoracic surgery using innovative approaches for lung cancer. Dr. Ugalde oversaw the creation of the lung cancer database at Laval University, and the university became the largest contributor in the world of cases to the IASLC database. She was awarded the IASLC Clifton F. Mountain Lectureship Award in 2019 and appointed Chair of the Database Committee of SPFC of the IASLC. In 2019, she was accepted as a member of the AATS. She has performed peer-review for the society’s journals as well as for other journals, including the EJCTS, and given lectures at AATS symposia and worldwide. Additionally, she introduced minimally invasive thoracic surgery in Brazil and Latin America and continues to pursue this mission as co-chair of International Affairs for the Women in Thoracic Surgery Society. 

Dr. Kim graduated from Seoul National University College of Medicine and trained at Seoul National University Hospital Cardiovascular Surgical Residency Program and took the Advanced General Thoracic Surgical Fellowship Program at the Mayo Clinic, USA.  After military service, he joined the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Seoul National University Hospital as a faculty member.  

Dr. Kim is an active member of the IASLC, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), and other international and domestic academic societies.  

Clinically, his main interest is lung cancer surgery.  Dr. Kim is one of the leading members of minimally invasive surgery and served as a board of directors for the International Society for Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery (ISMICS).  

Academically, he has been conducting lung cancer genomic research. His group discovered KIF5B-RET fusion mutation in the lung adenocarcinoma for the first time in the world. After that, using whole-genome sequencing, his group found the genomic mechanism of fusion gene formation and published it in Cell.  Dr. Kim’s team has conducted various research solving the unmet needs of lung cancer genomics and leads the development of lung cancer panel tests in his institution. They established a lung alveolar organoid model to test SARS-CoV-2 infection, published in Cell Stem Cell.  

As the Chairman of KALC (Korean Association for Lung Cancer), Dr. Kim believes that international collaboration is critical to achieving the goal of conquering lung cancer, and he is encouraging the active participation of KALC members in the IASLC.