Dr. Carolyn Nessim is a Surgical Oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital and Associate
Professor of Surgery at the University of Ottawa. She is the Program Director for the
Complex Surgical Oncology Fellowship Program at the University of Ottawa. She
completed her general surgery residency and master’s in biomedical sciences at the
University of Montreal and did her Surgical Oncology Fellowships at the University of
Toronto and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Her clinical
practice focuses on the treatment of patients with Melanoma and other skin cancers,
Soft Tissue Sarcoma/GIST, and Gastric cancer. She is a Clinician Investigator at the
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI). She leads many collaborative research
projects nationally and internationally in melanoma and soft tissue sarcoma. She is the
Regional Chair of the Melanoma and Gastric Cancer Communities of Practice for Eastern
Ontario and on the Cancer Care Ontario Skin Cancer Advisory Board as well the
American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Melanoma Measures Panel. She is the
Chair of the Research Evaluation Committee of the Trans-Atlantic Australasian
Retroperitoneal Sarcoma Working Group (TARPSWG) and the Vice-Chair of the Society

of Surgical Oncology (SSO) Sarcoma Disease site group. She is the CPD Chair and
member of the Board and Executive of the Canadian Association of General Surgeons
(CAGS) and is also the Chair of the Surgery and Surveillance Melanoma working group of
the NCIC-Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG). She is the President elect of the
Canadian Society of Surgical Oncology (CSSO) and Education Chair and on the executive
of the Canadian Gastric Cancer Association (CaGCA). She has more than 80 peer-
reviewed publications and book chapters and is the local PI for multi-international
randomized clinical trials like the MELMART-2 and STRASS 2 trials at The Ottawa
Hospital.