Dr. Falk is a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate and medical school training at the University of Rochester before he went to George Washington University for his medical internship and residency and to the University of Michigan for his GI fellowship. Before coming to Penn in 2010, Dr. Falk was a staff gastroenterologist at the Cleveland Clinic from 1986 to 2010. While in Cleveland, he received a master’s degree in clinical research from Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Falk’s clinical research has focused on Barrett’s esophagus, early detection and prevention of esophageal adenocarcinoma and novel therapeutic strategies and natural history of eosinophilic esophagitis. His research group’s contributions have included writing a number of publications on the significance of high-grade dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus, including biopsy forceps yield and findings of unsuspected cancer at esophagectomy, the use of cytologic sampling as an alternative to biopsy-based surveillance and the development of the concept of cytology specimens as a platform for molecular based biomarker studies. His studies in Barrett’s esophagus have focused on epidemiologic observations related to the role of Helicobacter pylori in the disease along with issues of age and gender in the development of cancer. Dr. Falk’s collaborations with other centers have led to studies on familial risk, molecular imaging paradigms, chemoprevention, radiofrequency ablation and endomicroscopy. At Penn, he has been part of multidisciplinary NIH U54 funding in both Barrett’s esophagus and eosinophilic esophagitis for the past 10 years. Dr. Falk has mentored medical students, internal medicine residents, GI fellows and junior faculty throughout his career in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
Dr. Falk has served as past president of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and past associate editor of the American Journal of Gastroenterology, he is an associate editor of Diseases of the Esophagus and he is the Chair of the AGA Clinical Practice Section. Dr. Falk is a recipient of the University of Pennsylvania Clinical Excellence Award, a two-time recipient of the Sidney Cohen University of Pennsylvania GI Fellowship Teacher of the Year Award and a recipient of the AGA Distinguished Clinician and the AGA Imaging & Advanced Technology Section Research Mentor awards. Dr. Falk co-authored the 2016 and 2022 editions of ACG’s Barrett’s Esophagus Practice Guideline.