
ESSO Governance
Our organisational structure is designed to support our mission and ensure effective leadership and governance. Explore our structure to learn more about our leadership, key committees, and opportunities for involvement in shaping the future of surgical oncology.
Select a governing body, committee or working group

Prof. Cornelis van de Velde

Prof. Dr. Peter Naredi

Prof. Dr. Emiel J.Th. Rutgers

HPB
Soft Tissue Sarcoma
President-Elect
Hassan Malik
Consultant Hepatobiliary Surgeon and Clinical lead for digestive surgery, University Hospital Aintree, UK
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Breast
Past-President
Isabel-Teresa Rubio
MD, PhD, FEBS, FSSO Breast Surgical Oncology, Director Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Professor of Surgery, Universidad de Navarra Madrid, Spain
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Prof. Dr. Marjut Leidenius

Prof. Riccardo A. Audisio

Dr. V. Suzanne Klimberg

Prof. Mitsuru Sasako

Breast
Skin / Melanoma
Soft tissue sarcoma
Thyroid
Breast WG Representative
José Volders
Surgical Oncologist, Diakonessenhuis Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Prof. Sylvie Bonvalot

Prof. Graeme Poston
Prof. Graeme Poston was appointed in 1990 consultant hepato-biliary surgeon at the Liverpool University Hospitals, UK, and Professor of Surgery in the School of Translational Studies of the University of Liverpool until his retirement at the end of 2018. He continues to enjoy an international reputation in hepatobiliary surgery. He personally performed over 1000 major hepatobiliary resections and with his colleagues this service is one of the largest tertiary resectional hepato-biliary practices in the UK, having performed over 4,000 liver resections over the last 30 or so years. He gained his undergraduate medical training at St Georges Hospital Medical School, London, graduating in 1979, and postgraduate training with Professor Leslie Blumgart at The Hammersmith Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, London, and Professors James Thompson and Courtney Townsend Jr at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.
He is the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the European Journal of Surgical Oncology, President of the Mersey Medico-legal Society and Past-President of the Liverpool and North West Surgical Association, the European Society of Surgical Oncology, the Association of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and the British Association of Surgical Oncology. He is a Past-Council Member of the Association of Surgeons of Gt. Britain & Ireland, British Society of Gastroenterology and the UK & Ireland Neuroendocrine Tumour Society. He is a Past-Chair of NHS England HPB Specialised Commissioning Clinical Reference Group, NHS England Specialised Commissioning Internal Medicine Programme of Care, National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) Colorectal Cancer Guideline Development Group and Quality Standards Committee, and the Cancer Services Committee of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He is the principal investigator of a number of national and international clinical trials in hepato-biliary surgery, and co-author of numerous national and international guidelines for the management of Hepatobiliary cancers, ten textbooks of surgery, and over 300 scientific papers.
Honours and distinctions include Doctorate of Science honoris causa, King George V Medical University, Lucknow, the Ernest Miles Medal of the Royal Marsden Surgical Society, Olaf ac Acrel Medal of the Swedish Surgical Association, Stanford Cade Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Kilroe Medal of the Christie University Cancer Centre, Manchester, N K Misra Medal of the Indian Association of Surgical Oncology. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American Surgical Association, the Chinese College of Surgeons, Association of Surgeons of India, and the College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka. He has been awarded the Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and has held numerous international visiting Professorships around the world. In what little spare time he has, he enjoys trekking in high places (climbed Kilimanjaro, trekked to Everest and Annapurna Base Camps, climbing Kala Pattar en route, and crossed the Lakya La on the Manaslu Circuit in Nepal) and travelling in polar regions (Svalbard, Shackleton Crossing South Georgia, Antarctica and successfully crossing the Northwest Passage).
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Prof. Lynda Wyld
Prof. Lynda Wyld underwent surgical training in the UK, spending time in Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester. She did her PhD at the University of Sheffield.
She was appointed to an academic post at the University of Sheffield in 2002 and is now a Professor of Surgical Oncology.
Her clinical interest is the management of breast cancer and she practices as a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon at Doncaster Teaching Hospitals in the UK. Her main research interest is in age related inequalities in cancer surgery where she has led projects to improve outcomes and develop decision aids for older women with breast cancer.
Her other career focus has been to develop training in cancer surgery and she has worked with ESSO, as chair of the education and training committee, to develop a curriculum for cancer surgery training and was the chair of the UEMS Surgical Oncology Exam board, developing the exam by increasing its validity and rigour and gaining formal quality approval from CESMA.
She is now the secretary and President-Elect of the UEMS Breast Exam board where she has led the development of conversion of the exam to an online platform and improved the quality and rigour of the exam.
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Thyroid
Board Member - Young ESSO Chair
Nada Santrac
Surgical Oncology Clinic Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Medical School, University of Belgrade
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Dr. Paul H. Sugarbaker
Dr. Paul Hendrick Sugarbaker was born in Baltimore (MD, USA). His college education took place at Wheaton College in Illinois. He graduated from Cornell University Medical College in New York (USA) and from there went for his surgical training at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston (MA, USA). Following his surgical residency, he completed a Master’s Degree in Immunology at the Harvard School of Arts and Sciences.
From Boston, he went to Bethesda, Maryland. At the NIH he was a Senior Investigator from 1976 to 1986. After 3 years in Atlanta at the Emory Clinic, he moved back to Washington (DC, USA) to become the Medical Director of the Washington Cancer Institute. He was at the Washington Cancer Institute for 31 years as Director of the Program in Peritoneal Surface Malignancy.
His continuing interests are in gastrointestinal cancer, gynecologic malignancy and peritoneal mesothelioma. Currently, his investigative work is directed at the peritoneal surface component of gastrointestinal and gynecologic cancer dissemination, referred to as peritoneal metastases.
Dr. Sugarbaker is a strong critic of surgical tradition; he believes that major changes in the technology of cancer resection are necessary. His theme, ‘It’s what the surgeon doesn’t see that kills the patient’, summarizes the concepts behind many of his publications both in the peer-reviewed medical literature and in the lay press. In the opinion of Dr Sugarbaker, peritonectomy plus perioperative intravenous and intraperitoneal (bidirectional) chemotherapy are essential parts of many cancer interventions.
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GI
Clinical Research
Board Member, Secretary - Membership, EJSO
Wim Ceelen
Wim Ceelen is a surgical oncologist at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium. He is a teacher of evidence based medicine and has experience with basic, translational, and clinical cancer research. He joined the Board of Directors of ESSO in 2020.
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