Joseph N Contessa MD

Summary

• Dr. Joseph Contessa is Professor and Chair of Radiation Oncology for the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson and New Jersey Medical Schools. He specializes in the treatment of benign and malignant brain tumors, brain tumor metastases, and tumors that arise at the base of skull. Dr. Contessa received his MD and PhD degrees from the Medical College of Virginia and completed residency training at the University of Michigan. As an attending physician at Yale he served in multiple roles including Vice Chair of the Therapeutic Radiology Department, co-Leader of there Yale Brain Tumor Center, Co-Leader of the Yale cancer Center's Radiobiology and Genome Integrity Research Program, and Director of the CNS Radiation oncology program. At the Rutgers Cancer Institute, Dr. Contessa is the Associate Director for Translational Research. His laboratory studies new approaches to improve the efficacy of radiation therapy for the treatment of malignant tumors, and his laboratory has received competitive funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the American Cancer Society. In addition to this support, he has also developed partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to advance translational research in brain, lung, and and head and neck cancers. Dr. Contessa has authored several practice-changing publications in these areas, which led to election as a Fellow of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He also serves on the editorial board of Clinical Cancer Research and has held leadership roles on NIH advisory boards, including Chair of the Drug Discovery and Molecular Pharmacology Study Section and membership on the NCI’s Head and Neck Steering Committee.