Paul Harari

Biography

As the Jack Fowler Professor of the University of Wisconsin Department of Radiation Medicine, Principal Investigator for the Wisconsin H&N SPORE Grant and member of the UW Carbone Cancer Center Senior Leadership Council, I facilitate the interaction of investigators involved in basic, translational and clinical cancer research activities. I am deeply committed to mentorship of trainees and leadership of multidisciplinary clinical, teaching and research teams.

The overall theme of my research program is to improve treatment outcome for patients with head and neck cancer (HNC). Areas of particular research emphasis include the interaction of molecular growth inhibitors combined with radiation and the use of conformal radiation treatment techniques to limit normal tissue toxicity. I recently served a four-year term on the Presidential Track of ASTRO (2016-2020) and thereafter as President of the American Radium Society (2023-2024). I serve as Principal Investigator for the UW Head and Neck Cancer SPORE Grant, a $15 million dollar effort (2022-2027) to improve outcomes in HNC. We are among four centers in the nation currently with a NIH HN SPORE Grant. I have been an active RTOG/NRG HNC Committee member for 28 years and serve as PI or Co-PI for a series of national and international clinical trials that have changed global practice for patients with HNC.

I served for 17 years as Chairman of the Department of Radiation Medicine at the University of Wisconsin (2007-2024) and am very proud of the high-quality faculty, staff and trainees who work tirelessly on behalf of cancer patient care and cancer research each day. Our teams illuminate the power and precision of radiation to heal, to cure, to image, to improve human health and quality of life. A unique and highly appealing aspect of radiation oncology is the opportunity for close collaboration between technology, biology and clinical medicine. Never before have the prospects for impactful advances in our field been so bright, and many of these advances involve multi-investigator teams, working together to achieve new milestones.