Academic History

Alexander van Akkooi, MD, PhD, is the Chair of Melanoma Surgical Oncology at the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA), and is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Dr van Akkooi completed his medical degree at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2008. During his surgical training from 2009 to 2014, Dr van Akkooi was awarded his PhD cum laude in 2011 for his thesis on on the thesis: “Sentinel Node Tumor Load Assessment in Melanoma: Dilemmas and Clinical Management”.

Dr van Akkooi served as a consultant surgical oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam, the Netherlands from 2015 to 2021, where he chaired the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Centre. He is a past-Chairman of the EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer) Melanoma Group. He is a current Fellow to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS) within the Specialty of General Surgery within a defined scope of practice of Cutaneous Oncology.

Speaking on clinical research investigating melanoma

Dr van Akkooi has published ov300 peer reviewed papers (H index 52) in high-impact journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and Nature Medicine, and has presented his research at major conferences including the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO). He joined the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) in 2022 as a Faculty member, as well as the University of Sydney and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

As the global coordinating investigator, he has received a NHMRC (National Health and Medicine Research Council) grant of $ 3.2M AUD to perform the randomized phase 3 Multicenter Selective Lymphadenectomy Trial – 3 (MSLT-3); S2601/EORTC-2519 (NCT07049276). He was awarded the 2025 SITC (Society of ImmunoTherapy for Cancer) Collaboration Award as part of the INMC (International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium) executive committee. He delivered the 2025 Martin Gore Memorial Lecture. He is a clinical academic and his research work focuses on staging and treatment of melanoma, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), locoregional therapies, surgical de-escalation, adjuvant and neo-adjuvant strategies. He is also a Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) expert.