Barbara Seneca Dempsey/William Maul Measey Professorship in Gastrointestinal Surgery

Established in 2023 through the generosity of an anonymous donor and the Measey Foundation, the Barbara Seneca Dempsey/William Maul Measey Professorship in Gastrointestinal Surgery recognizes and celebrates the importance and impact of spouses and life partners in the personal and professional accomplishments of surgeons.  It also recognizes the continued essential importance of gastrointestinal surgery in the larger area of general surgery where GI surgery provides a key part of the foundation for numerous fields and specialties (surgical oncology, trauma and emergency surgery, foregut surgery, HPB surgery, colorectal surgery, etc). 

Barbara Seneca Dempsey (1954-2020) was married to Dr. Daniel Dempsey (GME ’86) for 45 years until she succumbed to metastatic chordoma.  Dr. Dempsey practiced gastrointestinal surgery in Philadelphia for 35 years during which time he served as chair of surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital (1999-2000) and Temple University (2000-2011), and division head of gastrointestinal surgery at Penn Medicine (2011-2021).  A Philadelphia native, Barbara graduated from Princeton (A.B., magna cum laude) and the University of Rochester (M.B.A.) and had a very successful 40-year career in market research/sales forecasting with McNeil Pharmaceutical.  Most importantly, she was a selfless caring generous wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend with an unforgettable spirit and intellect.

The Benjamin and Mary Siddons Measey Foundation honors William Maul Measey (1875-1967) an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law Class of 1898.

Current Chairholder

Charles M. Vollmer, MD,

Charles M. Vollmer, MD, is an internationally renowned Professor of Surgery, Division Chief of Gastrointestinal Surgery, and Director of Pancreatic Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Vollmer specializes in Pancreaticobiliary and other complex gastrointestinal surgery with a research focus in clinical outcomes assessment in high-acuity surgery – especially pancreatic fistula. He has authored over 200 manuscripts, 40 book chapters, and 3 books focusing on pancreaticobiliary diseases. His current practice at Penn encompasses both malignant and benign conditions of the pancreas and biliary system with a strong emphasis in care of pancreatic cancer, cysts, and pancreatitis. He also serves as the founding Co-Director of the Penn Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cyst Program.

Dr. Vollmer is active in multiple national and international surgical societies where he has served in various leadership positions including Membership Chairman, Program Chairman, Treasurer, President-Elect, and President of the AHPBA. He also currently sits on the Executive Committee of the IHPBA and was its Scientific Program Chair for the 2016 World Congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is a reviewer for numerous surgical specialty journals and is on the Editorial Boards of Annals of Surgery, British Journal of Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Surgery, HPB, the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery. He is a member of the American Surgical Society, Society of Clinical Surgeons, and the Surgical Biology Club II. In 2008, he was honored to be the Josef Fischer Traveling Fellow in Academic Surgery for the Society of Surgery of the Alimentary Tract (SSAT) – an opportunity which allowed him to tour many of the top pancreatic surgical programs in Europe.

Dr. Vollmer’s collegiate education was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then received his MD degree in 1994 from Jefferson Medical College in his hometown of Philadelphia. From there he received general surgical training at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital program at the Washington University of St. Louis where he was elected into Alpha Omega Alpha. He studied gene therapy as a surgical oncology research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the middle of his clinical training. After Chief Residency at Washington University, he matriculated to the internationally acclaimed Hepatobiliary and Solid Organ Transplantation Surgery Fellowship at the University of Toronto in 2001. He initiated his career as an attending surgeon at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School (2003 -2011).