Robert Siegel, MD ’77, associate center director for education and training at the George Washington University (GW) Cancer Center, professor of medicine, and former director of The Katzen Cancer Research Center, has been selected to serve in an interim capacity as the Head of Medical Oncology at the GW Medical Faculty Associates (GW MFA). Siegel will begin in this role on Monday, Oct. 12, and will report directly to Barbara L. Bass, MD, vice president for health affairs, dean of the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and CEO of the GW MFA. Dean Bass currently serves as the co-director of the GW Cancer Center along with Robert H. Miller, interim vice dean for research and academic affairs, and Vivian Gill Distinguished Research Professor.
In this role, Siegel will be charged with leading the program in medical oncology during this period when the GW Cancer Center is refocusing its efforts on expansion of the clinical interdisciplinary programs in cancer care. To that end, Dr. Siegel will be charged with initiating key faculty recruitments, while also sustaining excellence in the education and training programs he has led. He will work closely with his fellow faculty and the MFA clinical administrative leadership to enhance the patient care team structure to ensure a high-performance clinical care system for our patients with cancer.
“We are grateful for Dr. Siegel’s willingness to take on this new role,” said Dean Bass. “His long record of leadership at GW and commitment to providing exemplary clinical care and supporting our academic missions, make Dr. Siegel the ideal leader for this role at this time. I look forward to working with him in this capacity.”
Siegel, who joined the faculty at SMHS in 1982, was the founding director of the Dr. Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen Cancer Research Center at the GW Medical Faculty Associates. His research interests focus on refining therapies for breast and head and neck cancers. Siegel was among the first to document that young African American women are more likely to develop biologically more aggressive breast cancer compared to Caucasians and Hispanics. In the area of education, he leads a nationally recognized annual Hematology/Oncology Best Practices Course. He has also supervised the medical school’s second-year program in hematology since the fall of 1982, is the director of the GW Board Review Course, and in 2019 he was selected to Washingtonian’s Top Docs.
