Bert W. O'Malley, MD

President and Chief Executive Officer
University of Maryland Medical Center

Bert W. O'Malley, MD, oversees the University of Maryland Medical Center downtown and midtown campuses and other community locations.

In addition to executive experience, Dr. O'Malley is an internationally renowned surgeon and innovator of skull base surgery, robotic surgery and head and neck cancer at UMMC, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. O'Malley served at UMMC and University of Maryland School of Medicine in multiple leadership positions from 1999-2003, including chief of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery, professor of surgery and associate director of the current University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC).

From 2003 until returning to UMMC, Dr. O'Malley was a faculty physician and executive at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. He began his faculty career at Johns Hopkins in 1995, where he rose to associate professor and director of gene and molecular therapy in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery before joining UMMC in 1999.

While in Philadelphia, Dr. O'Malley served as vice president of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, director of the Penn Specialty Network, and as the physician executive of Penn Specialty Practices. He also served as professor and chairman of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery with Penn Medicine.

Dr. O'Malley co-invented and developed a series of novel robotic surgical procedures called transoral robotic surgery (TORS). He co-founded the first human robotics head and neck surgery program and skull base surgery program in the world and was co-principal investigator (CoPI) of the first Institutional Review Board-approved clinical trial for robotic surgery in his specialty. He also served as the CoPI of clinical trials that earned US Food and Drug Administration approval for TORS procedures in 2009 and 2014.

Dr. O'Malley has also been the PI on several National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and industry and foundation grants. He is a pioneer in the discovery and application of molecular and gene therapies that treat head and neck cancer. He has also investigated 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.

As president and CEO of UMMC, Dr. O'Malley works closely with Mohan Suntha, MD, president and CEO of UMMS, and with leaders of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Dr. O'Malley is the son of Bert W. O'Malley, MD, professor of molecular and cellular biology and chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.