Willis Parsons, M.D.
Course Director, Medical Director
Dr. Parsons earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He completed a residency and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, followed by an advanced endoscopy fellowship at Maine Medical Center, Portland. Currently he is the Medical Director of the Gastroenterology Center at Northwest Community Hospital (NCH), Arlington Heights, Illinois, specializing in advanced interventional GI procedures and the management of GERD and pancreaticobiliary disease. He has hosted over 150 live endoscopy courses and has performed more than 35,000 advanced endoscopic procedures.

Klaus Monkemuller, M.D., Ph.D.
Guest Speaker
Klaus Mönkemüller graduated from medical school in 1991 from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City. After a residency in internal medicine and Chief Medical Resident at the University of Tennessee, he was a Fellow in gastroenterology and interventional endoscopy at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Subsequently, he obtained a PhD at the University of Magdeburg in Germany. Dr. Mönkemüller is an expert endoscopist and has developed more than 20 endoscopic techniques. In addition to having specialties and board certifications in internal medicine and gastroenterology in three countries, he is also an internist and infectious disease specialist. He has had more than 370 publications, written more than 27 book chapters and has given more than 500 lectures; he has participated in live endoscopy courses in 41 countries. Dr. Mönkemüller serves on committees of the ASGE, ESGE, ISGE. Dr. Monkemuller is also the founder of EndoCollab. He currently serves as a Professor at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and is a Director of the Division of Endoscopy at the Ameos Klinik in Germany.

Christopher Chapman, M.D.
Guest Speaker
Dr. Chapman earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed his residency and fellowship at The University of Chicago. He has been investigating and evaluating interventional endoscopic techniques and tools used to treat gastrointestinal disorders and obesity. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals including the Lancet, Gastroenterology, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and Clinical Endoscopy. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Director of Endoscopy, Director of Bariatric and Metabolic Endoscopy at Rush University.

Kumar Krishnan, M.D.
Guest Speaker
Dr. Krishnan graduated from medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He completed a residency at University of Texas Southwestern and Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. He completed a general gastroenterology fellowship at Northwestern University in Chicago. He currently serves as the Director of Endoscopic Innovation, Technology, and Education for Gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Krishnan currently serves on the ASGE Technology committee and is on the editorial board for Video Gastrointestinal endoscopy. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Gastroenterology, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Alimentary Pharmaceutical and Therapeutics and Diseases of the Esophagus. His primary interests include the management of pancreatic and biliary disease, interventional endoscopy and novel endoscopic therapy for digestive disease.

Vivek Kaul, MD, FACG, FASGE, AGAF, NYSGEF
Guest Speaker
Dr Vivek Kaul is the Segal-Watson Professor of Medicine (and former Division Chief) in the Gastroenterology & Hepatology Division at the University of Rochester Medical Center. His focus is Therapeutic Endoscopy, Interventional Endoscopic Ultrasound, advanced ERCP, and esophageal endotherapy for Barrett’s & Esophageal Cancer. He is a PI and/or co-investigator on several trials in endoscopy, pancreatic and esophageal disease. Dr. Kaul serves on several national committees with the ASGE and the ACG. He is Chair of the ASGE Reimbursement Committee and Chair of the World Gastroenterology Organization’s Endoscopy Committee. He serves on the WGO Governing Council and will be the incoming WGO Secretary General starting Jan 2024. Dr. Kaul is the alternate ASGE RUC advisor to the AMA and serves on several task forces including the ACG GI-On Demand task force, ACG AI task force, ACG Ergonomics task force, and the ASGE advanced endoscopy subspecialty certification task force. He is a member of the WGO Global Climate Change & Green Endoscopy Working Group. Dr. Kaul is a reviewer for several journals, and has published extensively in the field of interventional endoscopy among other aspects of Gastroenterology.

Jason Samarasena, M.D., MBA, FACG, AGAF
Guest Speaker
Dr. Samarasena received his medical degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. He completed both general gastroenterology and interventional endoscopy fellowships at University of California, Irvine. He is currently the Program Director of the UC Irvine Endoscopic Utrasound/Interventional Endoscopy Fellowship and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Dr. Samarasena was recently named the Teaching Attending of the Year by the UC Irvine Gastroenterology Fellowship. His research interests include Endohepatology, advanced endoscopic imaging in Barrett’s Esophagus, Artificial Intelligence and novel endoscopic device development.

Natalie Cosgrove, M.D.
Guest Speaker
Natalie Cosgrove is an interventional endoscopist at the Advent Health Orlando Center for Interventional Endoscopy (CIE), where she is also the Medical Director of Clinical Quality and Safety in Gastroenterology. She received her doctorate of medicine at Temple University School of Medicine and did her internal medicine residency at the University of Virginia. She completed her gastroenterology fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and interventional endoscopy training at Washington University in St. Louis. Her main clinical interests include complex pancreaticobiliary diseases, management of pancreatic fluid collections, endo-hepatology, and patient safety and quality improvement.

Andy Tau, M.D.
Guest Speaker
Dr. J. Andy Tau graduated from Harvard and completed all his medical and GI training at Baylor College of Medicine in the Texas Medical Center (Houston, Texas). Dr. Tau was awarded the Travis County Medical Society Ruth M. Bain Young Physician of the Year in 2021 as voted on by fellow physicians. Dr. Tau is published in recognized medical journals including Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. He is currently a partner at Austin Gastroenterology, a GI Hospitalist, and the Ascension Seton Network Chief of Gastroenterology in Austin, Texas. His special interests include hemostasis, endoscopic vacuum therapy of perforations, and social media-based learning via #GITwitter (@DrBloodandGuts).

Raman Muthusamy, M.D.
Guest Speaker
V. Raman Muthusamy, MD, MAS is currently a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and is the Medical Director of Endoscopy for the UCLA Health System. Previously, he was a faculty member at the University of California Irvine Medical Center, where he served as the director of the GI Fellowship Program, and was the director of Endoscopic Ultrasound at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Muthusamy attended Stanford University and went to medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His residency was undertaken at Duke University Medical Center. He completed his GI fellowship at UCSF and his advanced endoscopy fellowship at UCI. He is a Fellow of the ACG, ASGE and the AGA. He completed two terms as the ACG Governor for Southern California and is the immediate past Chair of the AGA’s Center for GI Innovation and Technology. He is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Gastroenterology and has served as Co-Director of the ASGE’s Improving Quality and Safety in Your Endoscopy Unit course. His research interests include endoscopic eradication techniques for Barrett’s esophagus, clinical applications of EUS and ERCP and endoscope reprocessing. Dr. Muthusamy has helped develop quality metrics in Barrett’s esophagus and led the initial multi-center evaluation of the first single-use duodenoscope.