Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology; Professor
University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center
Giles F. Whalen MD is Professor and Executive Vice Chair of Surgery at UMass Medical School and Chief of Surgical Oncology at UMass Memorial Healthcare. He grew up on the North Jersey shore, graduated from Harvard College and Duke Medical School and was trained at Cornell University Medical Center - New York Hospital (currently New York Presbyterian/Weil Cornel Medical center). He has an active clinical practice in complex tumors of the gastrointestinal tract, melanoma, sarcoma and endocrine system. At UMass he developed and championed a multidisciplinary organ based model of clinical cancer care, has been engaged in numerous research endeavors with collaborators in the basic sciences, pathology, and outcomes research, and served as Director of the UMass Cancer Center. On a national level he has served the American College of Surgeons Cancer Clinical Trials group (ACOSOG) in many capacities including as the chair of the committee to assess quality of life as an important outcome measure in their clinical trials. He remains engaged in graduate and undergraduate medical education daily and with the Worcester District Medical Society as an officer and the Massachusetts Medical Society as a delegate. His current research is focused on utilizing intra-tumoral injections prior to surgical removal to manipulate the immune micro-environment - to facilitate control of metastatic disease which is unappreciated at the time of surgical resection.
