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103rd Annual Meeting
May 6 - 9, 2023 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA
The world's most prestigious thoracic surgery event. Grow your expertise, network with leading experts, and help build the future of thoracic surgery.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: THE DREAMER AND THE PRAGMATIST
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: THE DREAMER AND THE PRAGMATIST
Dr. Yolonda L. Colson is the 103rd President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, having served in many roles since becoming a member in 2003, including as Co-chair of the 2015 Annual Meeting and Chair of the Advisory Council for the AATS Foundation. She is the Chief for the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Hermes C. Grillo Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. In addition to her cardiothoracic surgical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, her academic training includes a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.D. from Mayo Medical School, and a Ph.D. and general surgery residency at University of Pittsburgh. Career awards include: the inaugural Michael A. Bell Family Chair in Healthcare Innovation, the George H.A. Clowes, Jr. Research Career Development Award from the American College of Surgeons, the Edward M. Kennedy Award for Health Care Innovation, and serving as the current Exam Chair of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. She is the current PI/co-PI on four NIH R01 Grants and has recently been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee is a pioneering physician, oncologist, and author who has redefined our public discourse on human health, medicine, and science. A profoundly influential voice in the scientific community, he is best known for his books, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which earned him the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene: An Intimate History which won international awards and was recognized by the Washington Post and The New York Times as one of the most influential books of 2016. Most recently he has released, The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human published in October 2022.
Judy Woodruff
Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for more than three decades at CNN, NBC, and PBS. In April of 2017, Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication announced it would be honoring Woodruff and the late Gwen Ifill with the 2017 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. When Woodruff and Ifill were announced as co-anchors of the PBS NewsHour in 2013, it marked the first time that an American network broadcast would be co-anchored by two women.
