Ajay Maker, MD, FACS, has been appointed Chief of the new Division of Surgical Oncology in the Department of Surgery and the Maurice Galante Distinguished Professor in Surgical Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He will lead surgical oncology services—including breast, colorectal, endocrine, hepatopancreatobiliary, and melanoma/sarcoma surgery—at the institution via the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the VA of San Francisco, and other centers across the greater Bay Area.
Dr. Maker graduated with honors from Brown University with a double concentration in fine arts/drawing and painting and biology. He enrolled in the Yale School of Medicine and went on to do his residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Furthermore, he completed postdoctorate training in tumor immunology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering, as well as a visiting minimally invasive fellowship at the University of Paris.
Ajay Maker, MD, FACS
Top Doctor
Dr. Maker comes to UCSF from his hometown of Chicago, where he is a tenured Professor of Surgery and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois (UIC) at Chicago, Director of Surgical Oncology for the Creticos Cancer Center/Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, and Director of Surgical Research for the UIC-Metropolitan Group Hospitals residency program. Dr. Maker has consistently been named to Chicago magazine’s Top Cancer Doctors and Castle Connolly’s Top Doctor lists.
Dr. Maker’s research focuses on expanding the role of immunotherapy for colorectal liver metastases and establishing biomarkers of malignancy in pancreatic cystic tumors. He has been awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/NCI and the Department of Defense and is one of a few surgeons to receive the prestigious NIH MERIT award. He lectures nationally and internationally on the development of novel approaches to generate antitumor immune responses in gastrointestinal metastases and biosignatures of malignancy in pancreatic cancer.
