International Speakers



Peter Kingham 
New York, USA

T Peter Kingham, MD, obtained his undergraduate degree at Yale University and MD from SUNY Stony Brook Medical School. His general surgery residency was at New York University. He undertook a two-year research fellowship in hepatic immunology in the DeMatteo Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). After finishing residency, he completed a two-year fellowship in surgical oncology at MSK prior to being appointed on the Hepatopancreatobiliary Service. He is currently the International Surgical Oncology Fellowship Director and the Assistant Director for the HPB Fellowship. In 2015 he was appointed as Director of Global Cancer Disparity Initiatives. In 2016 he was promoted to Associate Professor. His primary research interest is determining how to improve cancer care for patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Dr Kingham is co-PI on multiple prospective studies on colorectal and breast cancer in Nigeria, co-founded the African Research Group for Oncology (ARGO), and is President and co-founder of Surgeons OverSeaS (SOS). He is PI of a UG3/UH3 NIH grant (2017) to study new technologies to diagnose cancer in LMIC. In addition, he has completed numerous prospective research protocols at MSK, with current protocols examining circulating tumour DNA in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. He has more than 160 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has authored 11 chapters.



Ajith Siriwardena 
Manchester, UK

Qualified in medicine from the University of Manchester and trained in surgery in Manchester and Edinburgh. Undertook advanced liver surgical training in Paris and worked as a consultant in the national liver surgery unit in Scotland. Currently provides expertise in liver surgery and pancreas surgery, especially for patients who have had bowel cancer and have then developed metastases in the liver.



Schalk van der Merwe 
Leuven, Belgium

Schalk van der Merwe is an associate professor of Medicine in the division of Liver, gallbladder en biliopancreatic diseases, Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium since 2011. Prior to this he held the position of associate professor in the department of Immunology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa where he headed the Hepatology and GI-research laboratory. He obtained his medical degree, MBChB, from the University of Pretoria in 1991. He completed a recidency in Internal Medicine in 1997 and his fellowship in Gastroenterology in 2000. He obtained a PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2005. In the laboratory he has focused on translational research in infectious disease and immunology related to the gastrointestinal tract and the liver. He has published more than 110 peer reviewed publications in the field of Gastroenterology and Hepatology including publications in NATURE, GASTROENTEROLOGY, PNAS, GUT, HEPATOLOGY, Journal of Hepatology, PLOS Pathogens and GENETICS. He is ad hoc reviewer for multiple journals including GUT and ENDOSCOPY. As a hepatologist and interventional endoscopist his clinical interests centers around the management of patients with liver disease including liver transplantation, as well as hepatobiliary interventions including ERCP and EUS. 



Tobias Weismüller 
Bonn, Germany

Tobias J Weismüller currently works as Head of the Interventional Endoscopy Unit at the Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik I, University of Bonn. Tobias does research in Gastroenterology and Hepatology focussing on autoimmune and biliary diseases, interventional endoscopy and liver transplantation.

Skills and Expertise

Liver Transplantation, Gastroenterology, Biliary Tract Diseases, Liver Cirrhosis, 
Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Liver Diseases, Gastrointestinal Diseases