Surgery News & Notes

Ali Tavakkoli, MD
Chief, Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery
Co-Director, Center for Weight Management and Wellness
Program Director, Advanced Minimally Invasive Fellowship
Francis Daniels Moore Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Tavakkoli is a minimally invasive and bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he serves as the chief of the Division of General and GI Surgery, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness and director of the minimally invasive surgery fellowship. He is an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

He received his medical degree from London Hospital Medical College in the UK and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England before moving to Boston, where he completed both a surgical residency and fellowship in advanced minimally invasive surgery at the Brigham.

Dr. Tavakkoli leads an active NIH-funded research group that studies the mechanisms of diabetes resolution after gastric bypass surgery, focusing on the role of intestinal metabolism and portal signaling. His group’s goals are to develop less invasive alternatives to surgery that can replicate the metabolic benefits of surgery without the risks.

He is an active member of many professional societies, including serving as a member of the Board of Governors of the American College of Surgeons, president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, Recorder for the New England Surgical Society, and Board of Directors of the Fellowship Council.  He served as an associate editor for the journal of Digestive Disease and Sciences for over a decade and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery.  He has been recognized for his dedication to surgical education with several teaching and mentorship awards throughout his career.

Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc
Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
BWH Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Chair of Surgery, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Director, Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Surgical Oncology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Raut is a committed clinician who specializes in the multidisciplinary care of patients with soft tissue sarcoma. He is also a prolific researcher and has a multi-PI R01 grant to evaluate an innovative drug-eluting film to be placed in the surgical bed and reduce tumor local recurrence rates. Additionally, he was co-PI on a multi-institutional phase II clinical trial evaluating five years of adjuvant imatinib for primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), co-investigator on an international phase III randomized clinical trial evaluating the use of preoperative radiation therapy for retroperitoneal sarcomas and a member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Sarcoma (TCGA-SARC) working group of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Dr. Raut serves as section editor for sarcoma in the journals Cancer and Annals of Surgical Oncology, associate editor for the journal Sarcoma and editorial board member for the journal ACS Case Reports in Surgery. He has authored over 210 papers and over 30 book chapters.

Dr. Raut is a graduate of Stanford University (BA/BS), University of Oxford (MSc) and Harvard Medical School (MD). He completed a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital followed by a fellowship in surgical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Raphael Bueno, MD
Fredric G. Levin Distinguished Chair in Thoracic Surgery and Lung Cancer Research, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Co-Director, Lung Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Lawrence Harvey Cohn Professor of Surgery in the Field of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Raphael Bueno, MD, is chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Fredric Levin Distinguished Chair in Thoracic Surgery and Lung Cancer Research. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Harvard College and medical training at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He subsequently trained in general surgery at the Brigham and thoracic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and joined the Brigham thoracic faculty in 1996. Over the past 21 years, Dr. Bueno has developed robust clinical and research portfolios at the Brigham. He has also mentored many fellows and staff and previously served as the cardiothoracic residency director at the Brigham.

His clinical focus is management of thoracic malignancies particularly mesothelioma, lung cancer, and esophageal cancer. His main research interests center on the molecular events that lead to malignancy in mesothelioma and lung cancer. Specifically, Dr. Bueno focuses on developing biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and predicting therapy in malignant pleural mesothelioma and lung cancer. His research also includes tumor sequencing and identification of targetable pathways. He runs a molecular biology lab at the George W. Thorn Medical Research Building and has been funded for almost two decades by the National Cancer Institute, Department of Defense, and various foundations and industry grants. He has invented, patented and licensed several algorithms and medical devices for patient care, some having been licensed by industry. Dr. Bueno has also invented and continues to develop several novel surgical procedures and devices.

Dr. Bueno is a member of numerous prestigious national and international professional societies. He has been an invited lecturer at teaching hospitals and universities around the country and internationally. At the Brigham, he has built the largest division of thoracic surgery in the U.S., with 25 faculty members and five affiliated network sites in New England and co-founded the Brigham Lung Center and the Lung Research Center. Dr. Bueno continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in patient care.