Michael Boyiadzis, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, UPMC Cancer Pavilion. His area of specialty and interests are: Acute leukemia, development of novel therapies for acute leukemia, natural killer cell biology, immunotherapy, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

John M. Kirkwood, MD, Usher Professor of Medicine, Dermatology, and Translational Science, Director, Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Hillman Cancer Center Research Pavilion. Dr. Kirkwood’s research focuses on melanoma, a cancer that afflicts more than 60,000 per year and is fatal to nearly 9,000 per year in the United States. He has received international acclaim for pioneering work with immunomodulators for melanoma that provided the first FDA-approved adjuvant therapy of melanoma in 1996. He has led more than 250 trials over the past 31 years evaluating cytotoxic, molecular, and immunomodulator therapies including vaccines for metastatic and high-risk melanoma.

Theresa L. Whiteside, PhD, Professor of Pathology, Immunology, & Otolaryngology, Hillman Cancer Center Research Pavilion. Dr. Whiteside is a clinical immunologist with many years of experience in evaluating human immune-mediated diseases. For many years, she directed an immunopathology laboratory performing a broad spectrum of immunodiagnostic assays. Her research expertise is in cellular and molecular cancer immunology.