Dr. Ramaswamy Govindan is the Director of the Section of Medical Oncology and Associate Chief of the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. As a medical oncologist interested in thoracic malignancies, Dr. Govindan has led a number of institutional and multi- center phase II and III studies in lung cancer over the past decade. Working with The McDonnell Genome Institute at the Washington University School of Medicine and with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project (as a co-chair) sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), he is actively involved in sequencing the whole genomes and exomes of several hundred patients with lung cancer. He led the group that has recently discovered mechanisms of resistance for chemotherapy in small cell lung cancer. Ongoing work led by him on genomic alterations in primary and the corresponding brain metastases from patients with lung cancer is expected to provide new insights into how cancer cells metastasize. In addition, Dr. Govindan is leading the efforts to move personalized therapies in early stage and locally advanced lung cancer. He is the Principal Investigator for the NCI funded ALCHEMIST trial to study the role of erlotinib in patients with early stage EGFR mutated lung cancer. Dr. Govindan is keen on translating genomic discoveries from the laboratory setting to clinical setting to improve the outcomes of patients with lung cancer and mentor trainees and junior faculty members. Dr. Govindan has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and has been awarded several grants from the NCI.