International Faculty

Ian Beckingham - UK

Is Senior HPB Surgeon at Nottingham University and Past-President of AUGIS. He is the RCS Quality improvement project Lead for CholeQuIC3 and is part of the SEG for the Sunflower study (RCT of patients with mild-moderate deranged LFTs to MRCP or not prior to Lap Chole). He is the UGI representative on NCIP (National Consultant Information Project) and an FRCS examiner.

He trained in Nottingham, Newcastle, Birmingham, Hull, Leeds and was Junior Consultant in the HPB Unit in Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. Research includes a BMedSci degree, an MD, a Hunterian Professorship and over 150 abstracts and publications mainly in laparoscopic and HPB surgery. He edited the ABC of diseases of the Liver, Pancreas and Gallbladder and has published chapters in The Companion of UGI Surgery, Aird’s Textbook of Surgery and Blumgart’s textbook of HPB Surgery

Clinical interests include Laparoscopic HPB & Benign Upper GI surgery and Laparoscopic Hernia surgery. He is a keen Back-country Skier and Ultra-marathon runner.

William (Bill) Jarnagin - USA

As Chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Hepatopancreatobiliary Service, I oversee a team of seven board-certified surgeons that performs approximately 1,000 operations a year for HPB-related disease; of that number, roughly 350 are pancreas and related resections, 350-400 are liver resections, and the remainder are mix of palliative, non-therapeutic, diagnostic procedures.d

It was during my research fellowship at The Liver Center at the University of California, San Francisco, that I became interested in focusing on liver, biliary, and pancreatic diseases. When I returned to clinical training, my interest in caring for patients with these disorders crystallized, so I pursued a surgical fellowship with Dr. Leslie Blumgart here at MSK — and I never left.

In addition to my time in the clinic and operating room, I have a keen interest in research, and have been actively involved in several clinical trials since joining the faculty at MSK in 1997.

Outside of MSK, I am a Past President of the AHPBA (Americas Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association), the largest organization for liver and pancreas specialists in North and South America, and am currently Treasurer of the IHPBA (International Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association). Also, I am an elected member of such national organizations as the American Surgical Association, the Society of University Surgeons, and the Southern Surgical Association..

Schalk van der Merwe - 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.