Lara Sokoloff, MD

Norman G. Nicolson, M.D., M.H.S., is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a surgical oncologist within the Division of HPB & Gastrointestinal Surgical Oncology. Dr. Nicolson completed his complex general surgical oncology clinical fellowship training and an NIH-funded T32 research fellowship at Johns Hopkins prior to joining the surgical faculty. Prior to this, he completed his undergraduate work at Williams College and medical degree at Northwestern University, followed by internship and residency in general surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital with a Masters in Health Sciences and research fellowship at Yale University. Dr. Nicolson specializes in treating patients with gastric cancer, peritoneal surface malignancy, appendiceal neoplasms, retroperitoneal sarcoma, gastrointestinal neuroendocrine and stromal tumors, and complex or recurrent tumors of the GI tract. He is trained in both minimally invasive and traditional open approaches to treating these cancers, utilizing laparoscopic or robotic approaches when appropriate. He emphasizes the importance of multi-disciplinary care and patient-centered decision-making, working closely with colleagues in medical and radiation oncology, gastroenterology, and radiology to provide comprehensive personalized cancer care appropriate to each individual. Dr. Nicolson's translational research focuses on computational and bioinformatics approaches to high-dimensional sequencing data from human biospecimens to better understand tumor cell biomarker heterogeneity and the importance of the tumor-draining lymph node in tumor-immune cell interactions in gastrointestinal tumors. He is a member of several academic and clinical professional societies, including the American College of Surgeons, the Association for Academic Surgery, the American Society for Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Society of Surgical Oncology.

Edward K. Kasper, M.D. is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in Natural Sciences. He earned his M.D. at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in 1984. His internship and residency in Internal Medicine, as well as his fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine, were completed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he then joined the faculty in 1993. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association as well as a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, having served on its board of governors from 2002 to 2006. Dr. Kasper has authored more than 100 articles and three books including, Living Well with Heart Failure. He is currently the Director of Outpatient Cardiology.Dr. Kasper's current research interests focus on the biological origins of heart failure. Specifically, his research has focused on causes and prognosis of patients with cardiomyopathy, a serious condition in which the heart has difficulty pumping blood throughout the body. Dr. Kasper works closely with his team at the Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute to understand the best ways to predict and prevent catastrophic cardiac events. With your support, Dr. Kasper will be able to continue his significant work in cardiovascular medicine in hopes of impacting the future of patients with cardiomyopathy and heart failure.

Originally from Wisconsin, Dr. Czarny attended the University of Wisconsin where he majored in molecular biology. After medical school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he completed an internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston followed by cardiovascular disease, interventional cardiology, and structural heart disease fellowships at Johns Hopkins. Currently, he is a faculty member in interventional cardiology and performs heart catheterizations and coronary artery stenting for patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD) and myocardial infarctions ("heart attacks") at both the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He is also a member of the Structural Heart Disease team and performs minimally invasive, catheter-based treatments for structural heart disease at the Johns Hopkins Hospital including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) for aortic valve stenosis, valve repair/replacement procedures for mitral valve regurgitation and stenosis, patent foramen ovale closure, atrial septal defect closure, alcohol septal ablation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and left atrial appendage occlusion with the Watchman(TM) device. He sees patients in his structural heart disease clinics at both the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.Dr. Czarny's research interests include the safety of cardiac stenting at hospitals without cardiac surgery backup and outcomes of catheter-based structural heart procedures.