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.

Dr. Chris Holsinger currently serves as Professor of Head and Neck Surgery and Director of the Head and Neck Oncology Program at Stanford University.    

Dr Holsinger's research focuses on robotics, surgical innovation, AI, and clinical trials. In 2005, he described the surgical anatomy of the lateral oropharynx in English which helped to advance the burgeoning field of transoral robotic surgery.   He helped refine several TORS techniques and served as the principal investigator of the FDA investigational device exemption trial in 2016-2017 for the single-port robotic surgical system.  

He currently serves Chair of the Surgical Subcommittee, for the NRG Oncology’s Head and Neck Working Group.   He served as surgical PI for RTOG920, the largest post-op clinical trial in H&N oncology, and also served as head of surgeon credentialing for ECOG3311. His current research focuses on AI in surgery and endoscopy, cognitive world models, autonomy, as well as multimodal profiling of HPV-mediated oropharynx cancer.

He graduated in 1990 cum laude from Vanderbilt College of Arts and Sciences with a major in molecular biology and in 1995 with his medical degree from Vanderbilt School of Medicine.  He completed his internship and residency at Baylor College of Medicine and his Fellowship in head and neck surgical oncology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. In 2003, he was awarded Fulbright Scholarship to study surgery at the University of Paris with Professor Ollivier Laccourreye and with Professor Wolfgang Steiner at the Georg-August University in Göttingen.     From 2003-2013, Dr. Holsinger worked at the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.   In 2013, Dr. Holsinger moved to Stanford University to serve as Chief of Head and Neck Surgery, where he also led H&N Multidisciplinary Cancer Care Clinical Program.