Administration
Executive Director
David Shibata, MD, FACS, FASCRS
Dr. David Shibata is an accomplished clinical, translational, and laboratory research investigator. He has held academic appointments and been employed at several world-renowned institutions, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he completed his residency in general surgery and a research fellowship in cancer biology; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he completed a clinical fellowship in surgical oncology; and Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL where he was professor of surgery and oncology. He sits on the board of directors and the Guidelines Steering Committee of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and is chair of the Colorectal Cancer Disease-site Working Group of the Society of Surgical Oncology. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Shibata is the principal investigator of a molecular laboratory and epidemiologic cancer research program. Dr. Shibata is Scheinberg Endowed Chair in Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at UTHSC.
Hematology Oncology
Dr. Hayes is the division chief of Hematology and Oncology at UTHSC, the Van Vleet Endowed Professor in Medical Oncology and the director of the Research Center of the UTHSC Cancer Program. He is internationally recognized as a key contributor to developing The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a $40 million, groundbreaking, multisite project to understand cancer at its molecular level through genome sequencing and extensive data analysis. As a chemotherapy physician, Dr. Hayes is an expert in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancers, and tumors of the mouth, throat, tonsils, tongue, and salivary glands. He also conducts and oversees research in his labs at UTHSC and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Dr. Hayes earned his medical degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He completed his residency at Boston University School of Medicine and a clinical fellowship at Tufts England Medical Center. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Dr. Hayes also holds a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and a Master of Science degree from Tufts New England School of Medicine.
Surgical Oncology
Dr. Martin Fleming is Professor and Division Chief of Surgical Oncology in the Department of Surgery. He is also the program director of the Complex General Surgical Oncology Fellowship, dedicated to developing both skilled independent cancer practitioners as well as trained physician scientists. He brings his expertise to the Center as an Associate Director for Education and Development. In this role, he assumes leadership, growth and oversight to the operational activities that contribute to sustainable education endeavors such as the summer medical student program, the junior faculty and fellows mentoring programs and training grants; as well as community engagement and philanthropy.
Radiation Oncology
Professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at UTHSC, Dr. Schwartz is an internationally recognized physician researcher, who joined the university in 2016. He received his medical degree from the Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed an internship at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle and a residency at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.
He has trained and worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and UT Southwestern in Dallas. He is the founder and director of the Center for Health Equity in the College of Medicine at UTHSC and leads multi-institutional, grant-supported research programs designed to improve the quality, equity, and effectiveness of treatment for all cancer patients regardless of race, ethnicity, or income. He has been continuously funded by federal, state, foundation, and industry research grants for the past two decades, continues to serve on multiple national treatment guideline and federal research panels for treatment of head and neck cancer, and serves as the founding principal investigator of the COVID-19 pandemic data consortium for the Memphis region.