Sudhir Sundaresan

Dr. Sundaresan was appointed the Wilbert J. Keon Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Ottawa and Surgeon-in-Chief at the Ottawa Hospital in July 2013.

Dr. Sundaresan did his undergraduate studies in the Biology Program at Carleton University and then obtained his M.D. degree at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This was followed by a Rotating Internship at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Residency in General Surgery at the University of Ottawa. He went on to do is Fellowship training in Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine/Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. He also undertook a 2-year Research Fellowship in Lung Transplantation there. Finally, he spent six months as Senior Registrar to Professor Hugoe Matthews at the East Birmingham Hospital, UK, receiving advanced fellowship training in esophageal surgery. Dr. Sundaresan began his career in St. Louis as Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, where he served for nearly six years. His clinical and research focus was in lung transplantation. He directed basic laboratory investigation in cellular immunology and molecular biology of chronic lung rejection and held several grants from the Veterans Administration and National Institutes of Health. He was later recruited as Associate Professor and Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery at Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. While his interests in lung transplantation continued [as Director of the Pediatric Lung Transplant Program at the Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago], his career focus centered on thoracic oncology. During his four years there, he developed programs in multi-modality therapy for lung and esophageal cancer, airway surgery, mesothelioma, and laser therapy/photodynamic therapy. He served as a national Principal Investigator for the American College of Surgeons Oncology Trials Group [ACOSOG]. He joined the Ottawa Hospital in 2002, where his primary interests have continued in thoracic oncology and in minimally invasive thoracic surgery. He chaired a Cancer Care Ontario provincial panel that developed standards for the provision of thoracic oncology surgery. These standards have been published, and he has spoken on the subject of regionalization of thoracic surgery nationally and internationally.