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New Staff

New Medical Director of the Ross Tilley Burn Centre

Marc Jeschke
Marc Jeschke

The Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is very pleased to welcome Dr. Marc Jeschke as the new Medical Director of the Ross Tilley Burn Centre at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. In addition to his clinical role, Dr. Jeschke will also join the Sunnybrook Research Institute as a Senior Scientist. His appointment at the University of Toronto will be as an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery.

Dr. Jeschke is an internationally renowned leader in burn care and research who comes to us from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, where he was an Associate Professor of Surgery and held the Annie Laurie Howard Chair in Burn Surgery. His clinical work in Texas was with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston Shriner's Hospital for Children where he was a staff burn surgeon and scientist.

He has been caring for burn patients and conducting breakthrough research in the field for nearly 20 years. In that time has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and has authored several books and chapters on burn care. Dr. Jeschke is a highly respected educator. He has mentored and trained more than 40 Ph.D., MD, and other graduate students in the field of burn care and burn-related research. He is a sought after speaker who has lectured around the world.

Dr. Jeschke was born in Germany. He received his medical degree from Eberhard-Karls-University in T�bingen, Germany and his Master of Medical Science from the University of Texas and his Ph.D. from the University of Regensburg, Germany.

In his role as Medical Director, Dr. Jeschke will be leading Canada's largest burn centre and will be an integral member of the Trauma Emergency and Critical Care program. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Robert Cartotto for his strong leadership of the Burn Centre as Interim Medical Director.

Paul Binhammer


Sunit Das
Sunit Das

The Division of Neurosurgery at St Michael's Hospital is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Sunit Das to its staff, and to welcome his wife, Dr Pavani Reddy Das, and their daughter, Lakshmi, to Toronto.

Dr Das received his undergraduate degree in Literature and Literary Studies with Highest Honors from the University of Michigan in 1995. He studied Philosophy at Harvard University before matriculating to Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois, where he was awarded his medical degree in 2001. He then pursued a Ph.D. in neurobiology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, during which time he studied the biology of neural stem cells under Zuhang Sheng and Ron McKay. His research work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and by a National Research Service Award from the NIH. Following the completion of his doctoral studies, he entered the neurosurgical training program at Northwestern University.

During his residency, Dr Das was recognized with multiple awards for his clinical, scientific and teaching skills, including the Goldberg Family Trust Resident Award and Congress of Neurological Surgeons Resident Award. He also received the Northwestern University Auxillary Board and Dixon Translational Research Awards in support of his continued research on neural and cancer stem cell biology in the lab of his mentor, Dr John Kessler. He has been recruited to St Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto as a surgeon-scientist.

Dr. Das's clinical interest is in the surgical management of malignant brain tumors and tumors involving the skull base. His laboratory in the Brain Tumor Research Center will continue to investigate the biology of stem cells in the normal brain and in primary brain tumors. He will hold an adjunct appointment at the Research Institute at The Hospital for Sick Children. He remains deeply interested in education in the clinical and basic sciences.

R. Loch Macdonald


The Division of Orthopaedic Surgery is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Simon Kelley to its staff and to warmly welcome his wife, Suzanne and their daughters, Maia and Saphia back to Toronto. Simon received his undergraduate medical degree from the University of Birmingham in the UK in 1997, and after completing a year of internship, having an ill-defined career path and a bad case of wanderlust, felt compelled to experience life outside the UK medical system and went overseas to work in Queensland, Australia. There he spent a busy year working in orthopaedics, trauma and emergency medicine. It was also there that he developed a love for power tools and realised that he had an inability to recall any antibiotic that didn't begin with a "C". It was at this point that he realised that he was destined to become an orthopaedic surgeon. During this year he also worked as an aeromedical physician for the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Capricorn-9 helicopter retrieval team as well as occasionally serving as medical superintendent at the local aboriginal community. Sensing that his trip back to the UK might be his last chance to quench his thirst for travel before joining the surgical career path, he took the rather indirect route of touring China, Southeast Asia, India and Southern Africa over a 6 month period.

Simon Kelley and family
Simon Kelley with his wife Suzanne, and their daughters, Maia and Saphia

Simon undertook his basic surgical training at the Yorkshire School of Surgery to become a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2003, dropped the Dr. in favour of Mr., as is the tradition in the UK, and soon after moved to Bristol in the south west to join the higher surgical training scheme in trauma and orthopaedics. During this 6-year training program Simon's orthopaedic career began to take shape. He developed a passion for children's orthopaedics, more specifically limb lengthening, deformity correction and hip surgery. In 2007 he was awarded the Sir Walter Mercer Gold Medal for the most outstanding performance in the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) examination in trauma and orthopaedic surgery. This was the largest surgical specialty examination to have ever been held in the UK.

Not satisfied with a routine one year fellowship, Simon spent 2 years in 4 different cities around the world. Not such a hardship when you consider that they often regularly place in the top 10 cities in which to live! The first 6 months was spent as the limb reconstruction fellow at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. In July 2008 Simon was honoured to be selected as the first trans-Canada paediatric orthopaedic fellow. In this pioneering fellowship he spent 6 months at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He then travelled to Shriner's Hospital for Children in Montreal for 6 months, and finally, after driving across Canada in his long suffering minivan, with his wife and 2 daughters, he spent 6 months at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, studying hip surgery and limb reconstruction and trying to remember everything that he had learnt in his 3 previous fellowships.

Throughout his training Simon has won awards for clinical excellence, teaching and research, has presented his research at national and international meetings in North America, Europe and Asia. Furthermore he has 14 articles accepted for publication and has written 7 book chapters. Simon also pioneered 2 large educational website projects, developing a unique core regional educational website for orthopaedic trainees in Bristol and a large national educational website project named ArgO for orthopaedic trainees across the UK. Simon was selected as the British Orthopaedic Association Young Ambassador in 2008.

In his spare time Simon enjoys his family, personal fitness, cycling, triathlon, snowboarding, playing golf and photography. He is an avid supporter of Bath rugby but is unsure of which Hockey team he is to support now that he has moved to Canada.

Simon's clinical practice will be at the Hospital for Sick Children, focused on paediatric limb reconstruction, limb lengthening and hip surgery, with a patient population consisting of rare syndromes, congenital limb deficiencies, hip dysplasia and those injured in severe musculoskeletal trauma. He is also embarking on a research programme by way of a PhD to investigate the mechanisms and pathways controlling limb regeneration, specifically the process of distraction osteogenesis and its characteristics in different disease models.

Benjamin Alman




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