Category: News

After an extensive national search, Ali Tavakkoli, MD, has been named chief of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery at Brigham Health, effective December 1, 2019.  

Dr. Tavakkoli is a minimally invasive and bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he serves as co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Surgery and director of the minimally invasive surgery fellowship. He is an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

He received his medical degree from the London Hospital Medical College in the UK, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England before moving to Boston where he completed both a surgical residency and fellowship in advanced minimally invasive surgery at the Brigham.

Dr. Tavakkoli leads an active NIH-funded research group that studies the mechanisms of diabetes resolution after gastric bypass surgery, focusing on the role of intestinal metabolism and portal signaling. His group’s goals are to develop less invasive alternatives to surgery that can replicate the metabolic benefits of surgery without the risks.

He is an active member of many professional societies and a member of the board of governors of the American College of Surgeons, and president-elect of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Surgeons. He is an associate editor for Digestive Diseases and Sciences, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery, and has been recognized for his dedication to surgical education with several teaching and mentorship awards throughout his career.

Please join us in welcoming Ashraf A. Sabe, MD, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery.

Ashraf A. Sabe, MD
Associate Surgeon, Division of Cardiac Surgery 

Dr. Sabe graduated with the distinction of Alpha Omega Alpha from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He completed general surgery residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a cardiovascular surgery research fellowship at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. He completed a cardiothoracic surgery residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital followed by a fellowship in advanced aortic and endovascular surgery at Duke University. Most recently, Dr. Sabe was a faculty cardiothoracic and aortic surgeon at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center.  

He is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Sabe’s clinical and research interests include all aspects of adult cardiac surgery with a focus on the treatment of complex aortic and valvular disease, as well as minimally invasive and endovascular procedures. 

Tari A, King, MD, chief of Breast Surgery has been promoted to professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Tari A. King, MD
Anne E. Dyson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Women’s Cancers, Harvard Medical School
Chief, Division of Breast Surgery, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center
Associate Chair of Multidisciplinary Oncology, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Director, Breast Cancer Personalized Risk Assessment, Education and Prevention (B-PREP) Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Dr. King is chief of the Division of Breast Surgery at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and the Anne E. Dyson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Women’s Cancers at Harvard Medical School. She serves as the associate chair of Multidisciplinary Oncology in the Department of Surgery as well as the director of the Breast Cancer Personalized Risk Assessment, Education and Prevention (B-PREP) Program at the Brigham.

Dr. King received her medical degree from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and completed a general surgery residency at Ochsner Clinic Foundation Hospital (now Ochsner Medical Center). Dr. King completed both a surgical research fellowship and a breast surgery clinical fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her clinical and research efforts focus on improving clinical management strategies for women at high risk of developing breast cancer with a special emphasis on lobular carcinoma in situ and atypical hyperplasia. She also has an interest in the role of surgery in stage IV breast cancer and through the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) she successfully initiated and completed accrual to a multi-center trial addressing this issue.

She has received several awards to support her work on high-risk breast lesions, including the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) Clinical Investigator Award in Breast Cancer Research (2008), a Career Catalyst Research Award (2009), an Investigator-Initiated Research Award (2012) and a leadership grant from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation (2016). Most recently, she was awarded a development grant from the Brigham Precision Medicine Program (2018-19).

Dr. King currently serves on the Steering Committee for the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC), the National Institute of Cancer (NCI) Breast Oncology Local Disease (BOLD) Task Force and the 2019 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Cancer Progress Report. She is also a member of the Executive Council and the chair of the Quality Committee for the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO).