James A. Tulsky, M.D. is professor of medicine and nursing and chief, Duke Palliative Care at Duke University. His research focuses on clinician-patient communication, quality of life at the end of life, trajectories of patient experience, and the evaluation of interventions to improve the care of patients with serious illness. He has authored more than 150 publications on these topics, including a book titled Mastering Communication with Seriously Ill Patients: Balancing Honesty with Empathy and Hope (2009). He was a Project on Death in America faculty scholar; serves on the Advisory Council for the National Institute of Nursing Research; chairs the Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholars Program Advisory Committee; and is a founding director of VitalTalk, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the culture of communication throughout the medical community. He has received multiple awards for his work, including the 2002 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; the 2006 American Academy on Hospice and Palliative Medicine Award for Research Excellence; and the 2013 George L. Engel Award from the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare for “outstanding research contributing to the theory, practice and teaching of effective healthcare communication and related skills.” He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Medicine, and completed both his residency in internal medicine and a Robert Wood Johnson clinical scholar fellowship at UCSF.