Dr Michael Veness has been a full time staff specialist in Radiation Oncology at the Westmead and Nepean hospitals, Sydney, since 1998. His clinical practice predominantly involves managing patients with mucosal and cutaneous malignancies of the head and neck.He maintains a large prospective database of patients with advanced skin cancers and collaborates with other researchers using this data. Michael has a longstanding clinical research focus on the important and beneficial role of radiotherapy in treating patients with non-melanoma skin cancer and, in particular, patients diagnosed with Merkel cell carcinoma (primary cutaneous neuroendocrine malignancy) and high-risk cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (especially those with metastatic nodes). In addition to a Masters degree in Clinical Epidemiology he has been awarded MDs by published work from both the University of NSW and University of Sydney and has published widely, both locally and internationally, over 100 peer reviewed publications and book chapters on various skin cancer related topics and is a clinical professor with the Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney. Michael believes strongly in educating and informing clinicians managing patients with skin cancer of the often underappreciated benefits, which in some cases can be lifesaving, to utilizing radiotherapy, be that, definitive (i.e. radical), adjuvant (i.e. post op) or palliative radiotherapy.