Rakesh M. Suri, MD, is Chief Executive Officer and Chief of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. In his role, Dr. Suri oversees the hospital’s overall strategy and effective operation as the first-ever US multispecialty hospital to be replicated outside of North America. In his previous role as Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi’s Chief of Staff, Dr. Suri spearheaded the recruitment of more than 400 physicians, and led the medical staff to deliver a suite of complex and innovative services with safety and quality outcomes that are competitive among leading academic medical centres globally. In his secondary role, Dr. Suri recruited and led the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgical team, and was involved in the creation of robotic and transcatheter cardiac programs at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. Dr. Suri was a speaker at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend, where he delivered a talk with Dr. Dale Shepard on the power of personalised medicine for curing cancer.

Dale R. Shepard MD, PhD is the Director of the Taussig Phase I and Sarcoma programs at Cleveland Clinic. In this role, Dr. Shepard oversees the early development of the new cancer therapies including the genomic-based treatments and immunotherapies that are revolutionising the care of patients with cancer. As a medical oncologist and clinical researcher, he has been the principal investigator for dozens of clinical trials and was recently the recipient of a National Cancer Institute Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award. Dr. Shepard is a thought leader for management of sarcoma, gastrointestinal and genitourinary cancers and a consultant for many pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Shepard earned a PhD in Pharmacology and his MD at The Ohio State University and completed a Clinical Pharmacology fellowship at the University of Chicago.

In March 2018, the Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend welcomed some of the brightest and most interesting minds from the UAE and around the world to discuss four of the most important moonshot challenges facing our planet. The event was inspired by the world-famous Aspen Ideas Festival that has been taking place in Colorado since 2005, as a place for scientists, artists, politicians, business leaders, historians and educators to discuss some of the most fascinating ideas of our time. The 2018 Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend topics included: “Polarisation: Bridging the gaps”, “Cancer: An end in sight?”, “Artificial Intelligence: Our super-intelligent friend?” and “The Modern Silk Road: A new era of globalisation”.