In addition to President of the American Head and Neck Society, Dr. O’Malley serves as President and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) as well as Professor of Otorhinolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery within the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Prior to joining UMMC, he held three major roles within Penn Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He was the Gabriel Tucker Professor and Chair of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery with joint appointments in the Departments of Neurosurgery, Radiation Oncology, the Abramson Cancer Center, and the School of Dental Medicine. As a health system executive, Dr. O’Malley served as Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and Director of the Penn Specialty Network. In Penn Medicine’s overarching physician and practitioner organization, Dr. O’Malley served as the Physician Executive of Penn Specialty Practices.
Dr. O’Malley began his academic faculty career at Johns Hopkins University in 1995 where he rose to Associate Professor and Director of Gene and Molecular Therapy in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery. Subsequent to his tenure at Hopkins, Dr. O’Malley served as Professor of Surgery and Chief of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland from 1999 to 2003 as well as Associate Director of the Greenebaum Cancer Center before he joined the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
Dr. O’Malley is an internationally renowned surgeon and innovator with extensive clinical expertise in the area of skull base surgery, robotic surgery, and head and neck cancer. He is the co-inventor and developer of a series of novel robotic surgical procedures called TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS). Dr. O’Malley co-founded the first human robotics head and neck surgery as well as skull base surgery program in the world and was Co-PI of the first IRB approved human clinical trial for robotic surgery in his specialty. In addition, he served as the Co-PI of the clinical trials that led to USFDA approval for TORS procedures in 2009 and 2014.
Dr. O’Malley has served as PI on three NIH RO1s and an R29 (FIRST) AWARD as well as numerous industry and foundation grants that focused on molecular therapy and molecular markers for cancer. He has also been a co-investigatory in numerous R01 and foundation grants and currently is a R01 co-investigator. He is a pioneer in the discovery and application of molecular and gene therapies for the treatment of head and neck cancer. He is also investigating novel combinations of stem cells and biomatrices for tissue defect reconstruction and has served as the Co-PI of the NIH-funded Penn Multidisciplinary Consortium: Personalized Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Tissue Regeneration. His current project involves a combination of nanotechnology and molecular therapy for the prevention of cisplatin induced hearing loss in head and neck cancer patients.