Dr. Martin, II, M.D. PhD, is The Sam and Lolita Weakley Endowed Chair in Surgical Oncology, The Director of the Division of Surgical Oncology, faculty member of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and a Professor in the Department of Surgery. He was appointed to the University of Louisville in 2002 as an Assistant Professor and achieved Professor of Surgery in 2011. Dr. Martin received his M.D. from the University of Louisville School of Medicine (1995) and his surgical oncology training and hepato-pancreato-biliary training from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (2002), and his PhD from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology (2008) at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

Dr. Martin has mentored over 30 medical students and masters’ students through both the summer research scholar program as well as medical students outside of that program who have shown a significant interest in surgical and oncology research. He is an active participant in a number of teaching activities including ongoing lectures to the third-year medical students, journal clubs for both the senior honor medical students as well as surgical oncology fellows and an active participant of the medical students’ education through their rotations.

He has completed over 15 prospective clinical trials and was principal investigator of 1 Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE), 2 Investigation New Drugs (IND), and 3 Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) trials. He has completed over 5 NIH funded grants and continues to maintain an active basic science laboratory.

Dr. Martin’s clinical interests are focused on the multi-disciplinary care and surgical management of patients with upper GI malignancies, including esophageal, gastric, duodenal, liver, biliary, and pancreatic cancers.
His Clinical Research Interests are focused in: - Hepatocellular Cancer, Metastatic Colorectal Cancer, Cholangiocarcinoma (Bile Duct Cancer), Pancreatic Cancer, Gastric Cancer, and Esophageal Cancer with specific trials in all of these diseases.
His research focus is surgical quality of care, metastatic colon cancer management and genetic predispositions to upper GI malignancies.

Dr. Martin’s basic science interest focuses on translational research - defined as animal model evaluation in esophageal, hepatocellular, and pancreatic cancers – for naturally occurring chemoprevention therapeutics, nanoparticle and gold particle targeted therapy, as well as optimal device evaluation.
Dr. Martin hopes to translate his findings to improve the overall care of these patients.
He has written more than 400 first or senior author peer review manuscripts and is currently the Principal Investigator of multiple clinical trials evaluating new technology in the Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary patient.