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 Surgical Residency Research Fellowship, as well as the Thoracic Oncology Research Laboratory and Biorepository. Dr. Harpole received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1980 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 Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of the Harvard Medical School under the leadership of Dr. David Sugarbaker from 1993-1996 when he returned to Duke to establish the General Thoracic Surgery program with Dr. Thomas D’Amico. He has risen to the rank of Full Professor of Surgery with tenure and is a Professor of Pathology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.