A. Bapsi Chakravarthy, M.D., professor and residency director of Radiation Oncology, has been named a fellow of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). She is one of 17 ASTRO members named to the 2015 class of Fellows.
The ASTRO Fellows designation, or FASTRO, honors those who have been an active or emeritus member of ASTRO for at least 15 years, given the equivalent of 10 years of service to ASTRO and significantly added to the field in the areas of research, education, patient care or service and leadership.
Fellows must be nominated by a peer and receive at least three letters of support from ASTRO members who hold senior leadership positions in the field of radiation oncology.
“I am pleased and honored to be named to the new class of ASTRO Fellows and to be in the company of so many other distinguished physicians,” said Chakravarthy, who is known to patients and colleagues as “Bapsi Chak.”
The 2015 class of fellows will receive the recognition Oct. 20 during the awards ceremony at ASTRO’s 57th Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
With the addition of the 2015 class, 259 ASTRO members have received the FASTRO designation since the inception of the award in 2006.
Chakravarthy received her Bachelor of Science at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, and her M.D. at George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Following a residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, she completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the University of Maryland and Radiation Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1998 and is board certified in both radiation oncology and medical oncology.
Chakravarthy specializes in the treatment of breast and gastrointestinal malignancies. She works closely with basic scientists and imaging scientists to design innovative trials for the next generation of cancer care.
She serves as Radiation Oncology Chair for ECOG-ACRIN (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-American College of Radiology Imaging Network), which is one of the cooperative groups that designs and conducts cancer research involving adults. ECOG-ACRIN comprises nearly 650 member institutions around the world.
Approximately 6,000 physicians, translational scientists and other research professionals from those institutions are involved in group research in an effort to accelerate the pace of cancer discovery.
