James Brugarolas, MD, PhD, is a tenured Professor of Internal Medicine, the Sherry Wigley Crow Endowed Chair in Cancer Research and the founding Director of the Kidney Cancer Program at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He is a Principal Investigator of one of two Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) in kidney cancer in the U.S. Discoveries from his laboratory led to the identification of kidney cancer causing genes, established the foundation for a molecularly-based classification, enabled mouse models reproducing the human disease, established HIF2 as a core dependency, identified drivers of tumor grade, and provided a biological explanation for elusive prognostic factors. A member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the NCI Renal Cancer Task Force, Dr. Brugarolas was the inaugural chair of the integration panel of the Congressionally-Directed Kidney Cancer Research Program that launched the first kidney cancer clinical trials consortium. He serves (or served) on advisory panels and committees of NCI, ASCO, and academic programs across the country. Following a residency in internal medicine at Duke University Medical Center, he completed a fellowship in oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he trained with Nobel Laureate William G. Kaelin, Jr. He holds an M.D. from the University of Navarra and a Ph.D. from MIT.