Global Cancer Research and Control Seminar Series 2025 (Past Webinars)

Asya Agulnik, M.D., M.P.H., Director, St. Jude Global Critical Care Program
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Asya Agulnik, M.D., M.P.H., is an Associate Member at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Critical Care. Dr. Agulnik is the Director of the St. Jude Global Critical Care Program, Euro Regional Program, and SAFER Ukraine. She is a clinician scientist, with clinical expertise in pediatric onco-critical care and research focused on how to implement, scale-up, and sustain interventions to hospital care and outcomes for children with cancer in resource-limited settings. Dr. Agulnik leads Proyecto EVAT, a quality improvement collaborative in Latin America to support implementation of Pediatric Early Warning Systems (PEWS) — an intervention to improve early identification of clinical deterioration in hospitalized children with cancer. Along with Dr. Virginia McKay, she was recently awarded an R37 grant to study sustainability of PEWS in resource-limited hospitals.

Dr. Agulnik obtained her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her residency in pediatrics through the Boston Combined Residency Program and pediatric critical care fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Carlos Acuña, M.D., Chief, Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Luis Calva Mackenna Hospital

Carlos Acuña, M.D., is a pediatric intensivist and Chief of the Pediatric and Neonatal ICU at Luis Calvo Mackenna Hospital in Santiago, Chile. In addition, he serves as ECMO Program Director at the Luis Calvo Mackenna Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Surgery at the University of Chile. Dr. Acuña is a member of the steering committee, EVAT program, and Global Critical Care Medicine Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Dr. Acuña obtained his undergraduate and medical degree from the University of Chile where he also completed his residency in pediatrics and pediatric critical care. He completed his training with a Pediatric Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Tennessee Health Science Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Hospital in Memphis.

Virginia McKay, Ph.D., M.A., Assistant Professor
Washington University in St. Louis Brown School of Social Work & Public Health

Virginia McKay, Ph.D., M.A. is an Assistant Faculty member in the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices, especially the sustainability and de-implementation of interventions. She serves as a Principal and Co-Investigator on a wide range of funded projects from the National Institutes of Health, Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality, and private foundations. She is a member of the leadership team for the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core at the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences at the Washington University School of Medicine and is the Assistant Director of Research with the Center for Public Health System Science at the Brown School.

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Kumar Prabhash, M.D., D.M., Professor
Tata Memorial Hospital

Kumar Prabhash, M.D., D.M., is a medical oncologist and Professor at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. His interests lie in head and neck cancer, lung cancer, and the development of cost-effective treatments. Dr. Prabhash has approximately 400 publications.

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Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D., Associate Professor
University of Florida College of Medicine

Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida College of Medicine and the Director of the Learning Health System Program at the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Dr. Salloum specializes in studying the implementation of evidence-based programs and policies in tobacco control and cancer prevention and control. He currently serves as co-chair of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s Global Research Network; is an expert panel member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium; and a member of the State of Florida Cancer Control and Research Advisory Council.

Dr. Salloum’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Cancer Research UK, the International Research Development Centre, Florida Department of Health, and the Aetna Foundation. Over the past decade, he has led an active research program in tobacco control in the U.S. and internationally, with a special emphasis on the Eastern Mediterranean Region. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Wayne State University and completed an NCI-supported postdoctoral training in public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Salloum has authored over 170 peer-reviewed publications.

Rima Nakkash, Dr.P.H., Professor
George Mason University College of Public Health

Rima Nakkash, Dr.P.H., is a Professor in the Global and Community Health Department at the George Mason University College of Public Health. Previously, Dr. Nakkash held a position in the Health Promotion and Community Health Department at the American University of Beirut, where she coordinated the AUB Tobacco Control research group. In addition, Dr. Nakkash was co-director of the WHO FCTC waterpipe tobacco smoking knowledge hub and Associate Director of the Knowledge to Policy Center. She is a prevention science expert with expertise in global tobacco control, alcohol, and mental health promotion with a focus on youth and vulnerable populations. In her work, she promotes civic and citizen engagement in health policymaking and translation of evidence-based public health to inform interventions and policy. Her research is supported by the International Development Research Center (Canada), Wellcome Trust (UK), Cancer Research UK, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Nakkash received her Dr.P.H. in public health policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has published on community-based participatory research, process evaluation, and implementation research. Her publications range the local, regional, and international scope, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean region.

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Rebecca Nowak, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
University of Maryland Baltimore School of Medicine

Rebecca Nowak, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) School of Medicine. She is also an Associate Member of the Population Science Program at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Nowak's research focuses on HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV), and the prevention of anal cancer.

Sylvia Adebajo, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., Country Director, Nigeria
Maryland Global Initiatives Corporation

Sylvia Adebajo, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., is a public health physician focused on communicable disease (primarily HIV) epidemiology. She is the Country Director at the Maryland Global Initiative Corporation, Nigeria which is an affiliate of UMB, and has a dual appointment with the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria (IHVN). Dr. Adebajo' research focuses on social determinants of HIV service delivery and health systems strengthening among sexual and gender minorities.

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Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ph.D., Director, Rice 360 Institute of Global Health
Rice University

Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ph.D., is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor of Bioengineering and Director of Rice 360° Institute for Global Health at Rice University. She also serves as the special advisor to the Provost on health-related research and educational initiatives. Her research has been instrumental in improving early detection of cancers and other diseases, especially in low-resources settings. Dr. Richards-Kortum is currently working with colleagues and undergraduate students to develop a Nursery of the Future, to provide technologies necessary to reduce neonatal death in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research has led to the development of 40 patents. In 2008, she was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and subsequently received a grant for the undergraduate global health program at Rice University. This program won the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction from Science magazine and the Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation.

Dr. Richards-Kortum is author of the textbook, Biomedical Engineering for Global Health, more than 230 refereed research papers, and 11 book chapters. Her teaching programs, research and collaborations have been supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Whitaker Foundation, and the Virginia and L.E. Simmons Family Foundation. She is a member of numerous academic associations including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, she has the rare distinction of dual membership in the National Academies. In 2016, The American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE) presented its highest honor, the Pierre Galletti Award to Dr. Richards-Kortum.

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M.R. Rajagopal, M.D., Director
Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Science

M.R. Rajagopal, M.D., is the Director of the Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Science, WHO Collaborating Center at Trivandrum, and the Founder and Chairman of Pallium India. His initiatives to remove regulatory barriers to the availability of oral morphine for pain relief have contributed to the simplification of narcotic regulations and the amendment of the NDPS Act of India in 2014. His initiatives have also contributed to the development of a government policy on palliative care in the state of Kerala in 2008 and the Government of India's National Palliative Care Strategy in 2012.

In 2017, a documentary film titled, "Hippocratic: 18 experiments in gently shaking the world," based on Dr. Rajagopal’s contributions to palliative care was released by Moonshine Agency, Australia. Dr. Rajagopal’s honors include: the Padma Shri, the third highest civilian award given annually by the Republic of India; the Alison Des Forges award from Human Rights Watch; and being named one of the 30 most influential leaders in hospice and palliative medicine by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2017. In 2022, Dr. Rajagopal published his memoir, “Walk with the Weary,” describing his palliative care journey.

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Lynette Denny, M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D., Professor
University of Cape Town

Lynette Denny, M.B.Ch.B., M.Med., Ph.D., FCOG, FRCOG, Grand Councellor of Baobab (Silver), is a gynecologic oncologist working in the field of cervical cancer prevention in collaboration with colleagues from Columbia University since 1995. Dr. Denny began her collaboration with the intention of evaluating alternative strategies for the prevention of cervical cancer in low-resource settings. Cervical cancer was and remains the most common cancer diagnosed among women living in poor countries due to the failure to either initiate or sustain cytology-based screening programs. Her group pioneered the search for alternative protocols for the prevention of cervical cancer in community-based research sites in townships just outside of Cape Town. Since that time, she has had extensive research experience in cervical cancer prevention, including three cross-sectional studies comparing different screening tests (such as HPV testing and VIA to cytology), a prophylactic HPV vaccine trial in HIV-positive women, and a therapeutic vaccine trial in HPV-negative women. She is currently engaged in an NCI-funded trial evaluating a screen-and-treat approach with the HPV Xpert Cepheid HPV test.

Dr. Denny was appointed the director of the South Africa Medical Research Council Gynecologic Cancer Research Centre. She became Head of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecologic at the University of Cape Town in 2013. Her tenure ended in April 2022 and she is now a Professor in the Department. In November she was awarded the Order of the Baobab by the President of South Africa for distinguished service to her country. Dr. Denny was a participant in the WHO Clinical Guidelines Group designed to produce recommendations for secondary prevention of cervical cancer and the use of HPV DNA/HPV mRNA testing as a primary screening test.

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Enrique Soto Perez de Celis, M.D., Ph.D., Researcher
National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Enrique Soto Perez de Celis, M.D., Ph.D., FASCO, is a researcher in medical science in the Department of Geriatrics at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition (INCMNSZ) in Mexico City. There he leads the Cancer Care in the Elderly Clinic, the first multidisciplinary Geriatric Oncology clinic in Mexico. Dr. Soto is a past recipient of the Young Investigator Award (YIA) from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the CCF in 2015, and an ASCO Career Development Award (CDA) in 2019. He serves as the national representative of Mexico for the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) and is a member of the ASCO Board of Directors for the 2020-2025 period.

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Susan Horton, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
University of Waterloo

Susan Horton, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She has held faculty appointments at the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Waterloo in the area of global health economics. Her earlier work on the economics of nutrition is well known, but she is currently focusing on non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries, particularly cancer and diagnostics. Dr. Horton serves as co-Deputy Chair of the Lancet Commission on Diagnostics, which was published in October 2021. Her work on cancer includes several articles on the cost-effectiveness of childhood cancer treatment in various low- and middle-income countries, co-editing the volume on cancer in the Disease Control Priorities series, and a recent paper on the cost-effectiveness of multi-cancer early detection published in Cancer Volume 128 Supplement. Dr. Horton has worked in more than twenty low- and middle-income countries including Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana, and consulted for over a dozen UN organizations, international development banks, and international research organizations. According to Google Scholar, there have been more than 20,000 citations of her work to date.

Shahin Sayed, M.Med., Laboratory Director of Pathology
Aga Khan University

Shahin Sayed, M.Med., FCPath-ECSA., FRCPath., is an Associate Professor and Consultant in anatomical pathology and cytology in the Department of Pathology and the current Chair and Laboratory Director of Pathology at Aga Khan University in Nairobi, Kenya. She serves as a steering committee member and Commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Diagnostics and a member of the Lancet Oncology Commission for Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Sayed is in charge of the breast service at Aga Khan University Hospital. Her research interests span the field of onco-pathology, with a special focus in breast cancer and solid hematolymphoid malignancies. She has recently been appointed as a standing member of the WHO Classification of Tumors Editorial Board. She has received several grants and peer-reviewed publications in her area of research interest. Dr. Sayed has also led research initiatives and interventions that have developed a sustainable model of community-based engagement to improve breast cancer screening and diagnosis.

Dr. Sayed graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree. She holds a Master of Medicine in general pathology from the University of Nairobi where she was awarded the best student in pathology prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, United Kingdom, and a Fellow of the College of Pathologists of East Central and Southern Africa. Dr. Sayed is also the Secretary-General of the College of Pathologists of East Central and Southern Africa, Chair of the Academic Committee of the Senate - East Central and Southern African (ECSA) College of Health Sciences, Chair of the Board of Directors of African Strategies for Advancing Pathology (ASAP), and co-chair of the Technical Working Group (TWG) on Diagnostics for the Cancer Control Programme at the Kenyan Ministry of Health. She has also been a recent member of the WHO-SAGE IVD Committee (2019 - 2020), the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP), and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

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Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, M.D., Director, St. Jude Global
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, M.D., serves as the Director of St. Jude Global and Chair of the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine. He is also an Executive Vice President and holds the Four Stars of Chicago Endowed Chair in International Pediatric Research at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He leads efforts at St. Jude to ensure childhood cancer patients have access to quality care no matter where they live. His main areas of clinical research and expertise include retinoblastoma, sarcomas, rare cancers, and histiocytic disorders. He has served as Chair of the Children’s Oncology Group Rare Tumor Committee, the President of the Histiocyte Society, and has acted as Principal Investigator of several institutional, national, and international trials.

A native of Spain, Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo earned his medical degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona before he came to St. Jude in 1994 as a postdoctoral fellow. He went on to serve as a clinical researcher and faculty member for more than a decade before accepting a position at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital, where he was Director of the Pediatric Solid Tumor Program, Medical Director of the Clinical and Translational Investigations Program, and Director of the Global Health Initiative in Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders. He also served as Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. In 2015, Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo returned to St. Jude to lead the new Department of Global Pediatric Medicine and St. Jude Global. At that time, St. Jude had 24 partner sites in 17 countries and addressed 2.4% of the global childhood cancer burden. Under Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo’s leadership, the program aims to grow St. Jude's reach and develop intervention models to ensure access to quality care for all children with cancer in the world. At present, the St. Jude Global Alliance includes more than 170 institutions from more than 60 countries. Additionally, Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo led an institutional effort to become the first WHO Collaborating Centre for Childhood Cancer. As part of this partnership, the WHO and St. Jude are collaborating with other organizations on the Global Initiative in Childhood Cancer.

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