2021 Promotions Announcement

We are delighted to formally announce the successful promotion of our UTDRO faculty for the current academic cycle!

Title: Associate Professor

Dr. Andrew Hope

After earning his MD from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 2002 and completing his residency at the same institution in 2007, Dr. Hope joined the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre as a Staff Radiation Oncologist (Clinician Investigator). In 2007, he was appointed Assistant Professor at UTDRO; where he went on to win 7 teaching and education awards for excellence in clinical teaching, supervision and mentorship. Dr. Hope has made significant contributions in advancing outcomes in head and neck cancer through clinical trials, enhancing the professional practice in lung cancer, and developing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology for improved radiotherapy targeting and modeling of patient outcomes. His expertise in the field of “big data” and complex analytics was recently acknowledged with a $608K CIHR grant (2020 – 2023), as a Co-Principal Investigator for radiomics analysis in lung cancer.

Ms. Sophie Huang

Ms. Huang has been appointed as a Radiation Therapist at the Princess Margaret Hospital since 2003 and as an Assistant Professor at UTDRO since 2009. She has made tremendous contributions to the personalized care for patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), promotion of global cancer control by raising awareness regarding HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) in HNC, and building of infrastructure that enhanced research, education, and health services. She has demonstrated outstanding impact, both locally and internationally, as attested by her involvement in research, quality assurance, and teaching activities with the Sanming Project at the Department of Clinical Oncology at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital. Additionally, she is a member of the Expert Panel that oversees the development of the very first version of American Society of Clinical Oncology/Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO/CSCO) Nasopharyngeal Cancer Treatment Guidelines. A prolific author, Ms. Huang has published 132 peer-reviewed articles, recognized by ELSEVIER as one of their 5 most cited articles in Oral Oncology; as well, in 2020, Ms. Huang was one of 25 most cited authors in Radiotherapy and Oncology since 2017.

Dr. Anne Koch

After completing her PhD and postgraduate training at the University of Toronto, Dr. Koch was appointed as an Assistant Professor with UTDRO in 2002. At the Princess Margaret (PM), she is a Clinician Investigator in the Department of Radiation Oncology, and the Head of the Breast Cancer Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Under her steady Co-Directorship, the Strategic Training in Transdisciplinary Radiation Science for the 21st Century (STARS21) program has continued to grow from its initial award of $1.8M from the CIHR and the Terry Fox Research Institute in 2003. Dr. Koch has received numerous awards for her commitment to teaching excellence, including the Professional Development & CME UT-DRO Education Award for two consecutive years (2017, 2018). More recently, Dr. Koch was the co-principal author on one of the largest studies to date examining loco regional recurrence in 416 breast cancer patients treated with modern pre-operative or neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which resulted in a high-impact publication in the Red Journal (2020). Dr. Koch has shown mastery in securing research funding as demonstrated by her portfolio of 25 grants on which she has been the Principal or Co- Investigator. In 2020, she was a Co-Investigator on a CIHR grant on the prospective evaluation of breast-conserving surgery alone in low-risk ductal carcinoma in situ ($1,235,476 CAD).

Dr. Alex Louie

Dr. Louie earned his PhD cum laude in Lung SABR from the Vrije University (VU) Amsterdam (2016), and since 2018, he has been a Staff Radiation Oncologist at the Odette Cancer Centre and an Assistant Professor at UTDRO. He also holds research appointments as a Scientist with the Evaluative Clinical Sciences Platform at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, and as a Clinical Scientist at the Ontario Associate of Radiation Oncology at the U of T Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Dr. Louie has a prolific publication record with a focus on comparative effectiveness of lung, kidney and oligometastatic cancer radiotherapy, and concordantly, he has an H-index of 31 with 4,634 citations. Since 2018, he has been invited to deliver over 30 local, provincial and international lectures, along with 9 media appearances, demonstrating his exceptional ability to communicate to both biomedical and lay audiences. A recipient of 21 local and global awards, Dr. Louie’s teaching effectiveness was recently recognized through the UTDRO’s Postgraduate Medical Education Excellence in Research Supervision Award. He also has demonstrated success in capturing competitive research funding, most recently as a Co-Investigator on a CIHR grant focused on economic evaluation of SABR for oligometastatic malignancies ($699,380 CAD), and on an OICR-CCO grant examining symptom burden among patients with Stage IV lung cancer ($300K CAD).

Dr. Hany Soliman

Dr. Soliman earned his MD and from the University of Toronto in 2005, and his FRCPC in Radiation Oncology in 2010. In 2012, he was appointed Staff Radiation Oncologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Assistant Professor at UTDRO. Since then, Dr. Soliman has made remarkable professional contributions in advancing the practice of post-operative stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases and integrating novel MRI sequences in the management of brain metastases. One notable example of his expertise is his leadership on the international multi-institutional collaboration of neurosurgical and radiation oncology experts to define the standard of care for tumour contouring, leading to a high-impact Red Journal publication (3rd most read in 2018, and 14th overall). Recommendations from this publication were incorporated into the NCCN guidelines and cited in over 60 papers. His teaching excellence has been recognized with the Sunnybrook Education Advisory Council (SEAC) Teaching Award (2016), the Post Graduate Advocacy and Mentorship Award from U of T (2015), and the Best Clinical Teaching Award from U of T (2014).

Congratulations again to all our successful candidates for 2021 – UTDRO is so proud of all your achievements!