CHICAGO: Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, FACS, a surgical oncologist from St. Louis, Missouri, is the new Chair of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Board of Regents. His election to a one-year term was announced following the conclusion of the ACS Clinical Congress 2022 in San Diego, California.
Dr. Eberlein is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor; director, The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center; and senior associate dean for cancer programs at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
In his role as Chair, Dr. Eberlein will work closely with the ACS Executive Director & CEO, Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS, and will chair the Regents' Finance and Executive Committees. The College's 24-member Board of Regents formulates policy and ultimately is responsible for overseeing the affairs of the College. The Board's diversity and variety of experiences and interests among its members enable the Regents to represent views related to myriad issues in contemporary surgery.
Dr. Eberlein has been a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS) since 1988 and a member of the ACS Board of Regents since 2015. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS) since 2004. Under his editorial leadership, the impact factor*of JACS is currently at a record high 6.532, which Dr. Eberlein attributes to the researchers who publish their work in the journal. JACS now ranks 14th among the 211 journals in the surgery category.
Dr. Eberlein is a member of the ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators (2019), and his service to the ACS has been extensive: he served on the ACS Board of Governors from 2004-2010 (as a specialty society Governor from the Society of Surgical Oncology), he has been a Member of the ACS Commission on Cancer since 1995, and Vice Chair of the ACS Committee for the Forum on Fundamental Surgical Problems (2000-2004). He was also extensively involved in the ACS Oncology Group (which merged with two other cooperative groups in 2011 to form the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology), and the ACS Surgical Research and Education Committee, for which he served as Chair (2000-2002).
Dr. Eberlein was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2004 and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018. He holds multiple honorary fellowships, including those in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (1996), the Swiss Surgical Society (2008), the Académie Royale de Chirurgie/Académie Nationale de Chirurgie (2012), the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (2013), the Society of Black Academic Surgeons (2015), and the Japan Surgical Society (2019).
Beyond his considerable work with the ACS, Dr. Eberlein has also been an active member of the Academy of Science (St. Louis), the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Board of Surgery, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Surgical Association, National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute, and the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO), among many others.
Dr. Eberlein’s research interests include tumor immunology and immune therapies using T-cells and T-cell subpopulations, tumor/lymphocyte interactions and their role in tumor rejection, identification of tumor associated antigens, identification of the co-stimulatory molecules and pathways in human solid tumors, and clinical aspects of therapy for breast cancer. He is an author or coauthor of nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles.
Dr. Eberlein has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout his career, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Citizen of the Year (2019), the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation President’s Award (2017), Academy of Science of St. Louis Outstanding St. Louis Scientist Award (2011), the ACS Dr. Rodman E. Sheen and Thomas G. Sheen Award for contributions to medicine (2006), and the SSO James Ewing Award (1999).
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*Impact factor is a metric indicating a journal’s influence that measures the frequency with which the average article has been cited in a particular year.
About Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, FACS
Dr. Eberlein earned his bachelor of science degree from the University of Pittsburgh, his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and an honorary master of arts degree from Harvard University. He completed his surgical residency at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, followed by a Fellowship in Surgery at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.
