Professor David Ball is Chair of the multidisciplinary Lung Service and Deputy Director of the Division of Radiation Oncology and Cancer Imaging at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, and a Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne. DB is a graduate of the University of Adelaide, from which he also obtained his MD. He trained in radiation oncology at Peter Mac and obtained his membership of the RANZCR in 1976 winning the Kaye Scott Prize. Since 1981 DB has devoted the greater part of his professional career to the problem of lung cancer. He has over 150 publications. His H-index is 27 and his top 6 publications have all been cited over 90 times. DB has given over 200 presentations at national and international meetings including invited presentations at the World Conference on Lung Cancer and ASCO. Past professional activities include Secretary General of the Sixth World Conference on Lung Cancer held in Melbourne 1991 and President of the Trans Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG) 2001 to 2007. DB is currently a member of the TNM Staging Committee of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) which made recommendations resulting in the 7th edition of the TNM system. He is currently Chair of the Australian Lung Cancer Guidelines Working Party. DB has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Oncology since 2007, and has served on the editorial boards of Lung Cancer, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Nature Clinical Practice Oncology and Clinical Lung Cancer. With HarveyPass and Giorgio Scagliotti, he edited the definitive lung cancer textbook: Thoracic Oncology: the IASLC multidisciplinary approach, published in May 2014.. In 2011, DB was presented with the Merit Award of the IASLC and the Gold Medal of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists. In 2012, he received the Tom Reeve Award for outstanding service to oncology at the annual meeting of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia.