Melina Windon earned her medical degree at the University of Connecticut and completed an Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery residency and T32 research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. She went on to complete a Head and Neck Cancer and Microvascular Reconstructive Surgery fellowship at the University of Michigan, and is now practicing at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Her research interests include head and neck cancer survivorship, quality and delivery in rural areas, and the epidemiology of head and neck cancers, particularly those linked to HPV.

Andrés M. Bur, MD, FACS is the David S. Zamierowski Professor of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and Vice Chair of Research at the University of Kansas. He earned his medical degree and completed residency training in Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by fellowship in Head and Neck Surgical Oncology and Microvascular Reconstructive Surgery at Emory University. As a fellowship-trained head and neck oncologic surgeon, his clinical practice focuses on complex oncologic resection and microvascular reconstruction, with particular expertise in transoral robotic surgery and free tissue transfer for advanced head and neck malignancies.

Dr. Bur’s research program centers on the development and clinical validation of biologically grounded artificial intelligence platforms for precision head and neck oncology. His work integrates radiomics, spatial transcriptomics, and machine learning to improve treatment response prediction, early cancer detection, and surgical decision-making in HNSCC. Through multi-institutional validation and translational radiogenomic studies linking imaging phenotypes to spatial tumor biology, his research advances a scalable, evidence-based framework for responsible AI implementation in cancer care. Supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the University of Kansas Cancer Center, Dr. Bur serves as Chair of the Young Members Service and Co-Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Task Force for the American Head and Neck Society. He is an invited national and international speaker on responsible clinical integration of artificial intelligence in otolaryngology and head and neck oncology.