Vali Papadimitrakopoulou, M.D., Vice President, Clinical Development Leader, GPD Pfizer Oncology, is recognized around the world for her expertise in personalized genomics-driven cancer therapies, immunotherapies, translational research and cancer chemoprevention. She joined Pfizer In September 2019 from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she was an Endowed Professor of Medicine and Section Chief of Thoracic Oncology in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology. Vali oversees the whole Pfizer Oncology clinical development portfolio and a global team that spans hematology and solid tumors. She has led numerous clinical and translational research projects focused on the development of biomarker-based targeted therapies to overcome therapeutic resistance in advanced disease. Vali recently has been a member of the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) and has served as co-principal investigator on the Master Lung Protocol (Lung-MAP) study, a pioneering umbrella trial simultaneously testing multiple precision medicines in squamous cell lung cancer, supported by the National Cancer Institute and run through a unique and groundbreaking partnership between patient advocacy organizations, pharmaceutical companies (including Pfizer) and public institutions. Vali has extensive experience leading the design and implementation of innovative clinical development programs in oncology, managing multidisciplinary research teams, and spearheading collaborative efforts within and across the global oncology community. Vali received her medical degree from the University of Patras School of Medicine, completed residencies at Institut Gustave Roussy in Paris and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and currently pursuing an Executive MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including, most recently, the 2018 Addario Lectureship Award from the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and MD Anderson Cancer Center’s 2017 Irwin H. Krakoff Award of Excellence in Clinical Research. She is the lead author or co-author of more than 200 publications, including articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

David H. Harpole, Jr. is a Professor of Surgery in the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, where he serves as Director of the Duke Surgical Research Fellowship and leads Duke’s Lung Cancer Research Laboratory and Biorepository. Dr. Harpole received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1984 and completed his General and Thoracic Surgery Residencies in 1993 under Dr. David Sabiston at Duke University where he also was the Posthelwaite Thoracic Research fellow from 1986-1988. After completion, he joined the faculty of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s under the leadership of Dr. David Sugarbaker from 1993-1996. He established a research laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Judah Folkman at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute where he received his first NIH R-grant as a PI. He was recruited back to Duke to establish the General Thoracic Surgery program and the Thoracic Oncology Research Laboratory in 1996. He has risen to the rank of Full Professor of Surgery with tenure and is a Full Professor of Pathology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Harpole has served in the Department of Surgery and Division of Thoracic Surgery for the past 20+ years; as Vice-chairman for Faculty Affairs, Vice-chief of The Division of Surgical Sciences and Vice Chairman for Research. He also served as the Surgical coordinator for Duke University Medical Center, Cancer and Leukemia Group B, Chairman, Society of Thoracic Surgeons: General Thoracic Surgery Database Committee, Chairman of the Thoracic Surgery Sub-committee, CALGB and Vice-chairman, American College of Surgeons Oncology Group. He also was the Co-chair of the Thoracic Tumor Committee of the National Cancer Database and recently retired as a Director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and completed his role as a Board of Director of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. He will be conference president of 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC).
Dr. Harpole has contributed numerous articles (> 200) and abstracts to the medical literature. His work on non-small cell lung cancer, esophageal carcinoma and mesothelioma. He has directed an active translational thoracic oncology research laboratory for more 25 years that has had National Institutes of Health, Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense peer reviewed grant support and has served on NCI and VA grant review study sections for more than 15 years, including chair of the NCI R03, R21, R33 grant review study section for the last 4 years. He has led several large multi-institutional lung cancer clinical trials based on his laboratory efforts. Over the last 8 years, he was the co-chair of the NCI-CTEP Thoracic Malignancies Steering Committee that oversees all large clinical trials in lung cancer and mesothelioma in the US and Canada.
Dr. Harpole is an internationally-recognized expert in thoracic oncology in translational science, clinical research and education. He is also one of the innovators of minimally-invasive approaches to lung cancer and the multi-modality treatment of mesothelioma. Over the last two+ decades, he has trained and mentored more than 20 research fellows who hold academic positions across the US and Canada. Currently, he is the PI of three NIH-funded training grants (NCI T32, NHLBI R38 and NIAID R38).

I am cardiothoracic surgeon and I was Chief Investigator of the MARS trial and the PulMiCC trial
A summary of my roles can be found on the web at
https://www.ctsnet.org/home/ttreasure

Lucía Carolina Viola is an institutional member of the Fundación Neumológica Colombiana in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. She obtained his medical degree at the Universidad del Sinú (Cartagena, Colombia) and then she did postgraduate studies in internal medicine (Universidad de la Sabana, Chía, Colombia), and pulmonology (Universidad de la Sabana, Chía, Colombia).
Her current areas of interest and emphasis include the search for biomarkers to early diagnosis of lung cancer, early detection programs based on traditional strategies as low dose computed tomography, early detection programs in low income countries and in never smokers. She is the leader of the early detection program of her institution.

Medical Oncologist NOB Oncoclinicas; President Brazilian Society of Clinical Oncology; Board Member IASLC and Past Chair IAC