Our Team

Dr. Sue S. Yom, MD, PhD, MAS, FASTRO is the Irwin Mark Jacobs and Joan Klein Jacobs Distinguished Professor in Head and Neck Cancer Radiation Oncology and Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. She earned her medical degree from The University of Pennsylvania in 2002. She completed a simultaneous PhD in English. Dr. Yom completed a residency in Radiation Oncology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at The M. D. Anderson Cancer Center before joining the faculty at The University of California School of Medicine in 2007. During her assistant professorship, she completed a Master’s degree in clinical research. Her clinical practice and academic focus include head and neck and skin cancers as well as thoracic malignancies.

Her departmental administrative roles are as Vice Chair for the Strategic Advisory Committee and as Chief of the Radiation Oncology Head and Neck, Cutaneous, and Thoracic Services. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Oral, Head and Neck Site Committee and Full Member in Molecular Oncology within the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her service to the oncology community includes numerous national capacities, as the Radiation Oncology Chair of the NCI Head and Neck Steering Committee within the NCI National Clinical Trials Network, President of the American Radium Society, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, and member of the NCCN Head and Neck Cancers guidelines committee and the Head and Neck Cancer Resource Panel of the Clinical Affairs and Quality Committee of the American Society of Radiation Oncology. She was the founding chair of the Appropriate Use Criteria of the American Radium Society. She previously served as the Appropriateness Criteria committee chair, written and oral board examiner for the American College of Radiology and as a member of the National Cancer Institute Head and Neck Recurrent/Metastatic Disease Task Force.

She is the Principal Investigator of NRG-HN002 and NRG-HN005, two international studies testing reduced-intensity therapy for HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer and Co-PI of NRG-HN001, an international study of risk-adapted therapy for EBV-associated nasopharyngeal cancer. She is the North American chair of Nanoray, a study investigating nanoparticle enhancement of radiation treatment. She is the principal investigator of several clinical trials aimed at reducing symptom severity and improving quality of life. She is a frequently requested plenary speaker, program committee member, and media commentator and serves on expert and organizing panels for several radiation oncology and head and neck and lung cancer professional societies. She has been author or co-author on over 250 publications in the medical literature.

Dr. Yom’s primary research interests are centered on the development and evaluation of novel molecular targeted agents and immunotherapies as well as state-of-the-art technical advances in radiation therapy. She has special interests in virally driven malignancies associated with humanpapillomavirus (HPV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and Merkel cell polyomavirus. Her research has entailed collaborating with laboratory-based investigators to identify patient, tumor, and technical characteristics that influence prognosis and response to specific therapies, including tissue-, blood-, and imaging-based biomarkers. She has also conducted research on long-term quality of life, patient-centered decision-making, and medical publishing.

Redefining Possible