Jose A. Cancelas, M.D. Ph.D. holds the title as Executive Director at Connell and O'Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Member of the Faculty, Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

As Director of CMCF, Dr. Cancelas is responsible for cell manufacturing for the adult and pediatric stem cell transplantation and immune effector cell programs at Dana-Farber. As a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, he will also oversee cell manufacturing support for patients enrolled on clinical research protocols at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Cancelas works closely with laboratory investigators, clinical investigators, and industry collaborators to manufacture innovative cellular products that are tested in a variety of disease settings.

Dr. Cancelas is a physician-scientist with a broad background in transfusion medicine, cell therapies, hematology, and stem cell biology. Prior to joining Dana-Farber, he served as Director and Chairman of the Hoxworth Blood Center, University of Cincinnati and at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, as a Leader of the Cincinnati Children's Stem Cell Program in the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute, and as the Director of the Translational Core Laboratories. With renowned research in hematopoiesis and collaborative studies in gene therapy and hemotherapies, Cancelas has well-established scientific collaborations with investigators at Boston Children's Hospital.

Dr. Cancelas is a graduate of Autonomous University of Madrid and University of Alcala de Henares, both in Madrid, Spain, and completed training in the Cancer Research Institute of Barcelona, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, and the University of Cincinnati. He has authored over 220 manuscripts and his research has been published in Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, Nature Communications, JCI, PNAS, Blood, and Transfusion among other journals. He is Associate Editor of the journal Transfusion, the Vice-President of the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB), and the President of AABB Foundation.
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John B. Holcomb, M.D., FACS, COL (Ret) holds the title as Professor of Surgery at University of Alabama, Birmingham.Dr. Holcomb received his M.D. from the University of Arkansas Medical School in 1985.

Dr. Holcomb entered the U.S. Army in 1985, and completed his general surgery training in 1991. Dr Holcomb then deployed with the Joint Special Operations Command for the next decade. From 2002 to 2008, COL Holcomb was the Commander of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research and Trauma Consultant for the Army Surgeon General. Over the years he has deployed in multiple combat deployments. He is a three time recipient of the Army’s Greatest Invention award.  COL Holcomb retired from active duty in 2008 and received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Trauma Resuscitation Science from the American Heart Association, the United States Special Operations Command Medal, and the Service award from the American College of Surgery. He has been a member of the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care since 2001.

From 2008-2019 Dr. Holcomb worked at UT Health, Houston, as a Professor of Surgery. In 2016 he received the MAJ Jonathan Letterman award from the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. In 2019 Dr Holcomb joined the University of Alabama, Birmingham as a Professor of Surgery.

Dr. Holcomb is actively involved in clinical medicine, education, research, entrepreneurship and is a founder of a health IT company. He reviews papers for more than 35 journals, has published > 690 peer reviewed articles, consults with several companies and serves on multiple boards.

Dr. Katz is an infectious disease specialist who has extensive experience in HIV medicine and in transfusion medicine and blood banking. Dr. Katz currently serves as an adjunct clinical professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa and as Acting Chief Medical Officer for the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center (MVRBC) in Davenport, Iowa.  Dr. Katz practiced infectious disease and HIV medicine at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport, where he was also the hospital’s epidemiologist. He founded the Quad City Regional Virology Center (a Ryan White Comprehensive HIV Care Center) in 1995, serving as Director until 2009. In 1986, Dr. Katz joined MVRBC as Assistant Medical Director, subsequently being promoted to Medical Director and then Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs until 2012. He served as Chief Medical Officer of America’s Blood Centers (2012–2019), an association representing U.S. and Canadian community blood centers.

Since 1991, Dr. Katz has been a member of the Transfusion Transmitted Diseases Committee at the AABB, where he currently serves as chair. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Transfusion and is an associate editor of the AABB Technical Manual 20th Edition. Dr. Katz has twice been a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, serving as chair from 1994–1995. He is a current member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability. Dr. Katz received his Medical Doctorate from the University of Iowa College of Medicine.
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Glen Whitman, M.D. holds the title of Director of Cardiovascular Surgical Intensive Care Unit and Professor of Cardiac Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Glenn Whitman, M.D., joined the Johns Hopkins Division of Cardiac Surgery in 2009 as associate professor of surgery. His training began at the University of Pennsylvania, and he finished his general surgery training and then completed his training as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the University of Colorado. Dr. Whitman became an assistant professor at the University of Colorado and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the Denver Veteran’s Administration Hospital. In 1990, he returned to his home city of Philadelphia, where he became chief of cardiac surgery at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, formerly Women’s Medical College, the first medical school in the United States to accept women. Dr. Whitman remained there for eight years before moving to the University of Maryland as chief of cardiac surgery. He has served as the director of transplantation and United Network for Organ Sharing representative at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, as well as its director of perioperative services, managing preadmission testing, the operating room, and the post-anesthesia care unit. In 2007, he left Temple for Thomas Jefferson Hospital, taking over the responsibilities of running the cardiac surgery intensive care unit. In summer 2009, he was returned to Baltimore to run the cardiac surgery intensive care unit and oversee the performance improvement/quality assurance program for cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Whitman’s initial research interests were in cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury and P31 nuclear magnetic resonance of cardiac bioenergetics, for which he received both National Institutes of Health and Department of Veterans Affairs funding. He has since become involved with quality outcome, and has presented at the American College of Surgeons and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons on the difficulties associated with performance improvement and quality assurance in the field of health care, particularly in the ICU.

Dr. Whitman has stepped down from his role as the Chair of the Society of Thoracic Surgery Workforce on Critical Care, a role he had held since 2014. He continues to participate in the content of the Annual Meetings for the Society of Thoracic Surgery, The American Association of Thoracic Surgery, and The STS Fall Critical Care meetings as the Programmatic Co-Chair for Perioperative Care.
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