It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend Dr Tomer Adar passed away on 30 July 2018, at age 39, after a short illness. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him, but especially by his wife Adi, daughter Ella and son Arbel.
Tomer was born on 25 November 1978, in Tel Aviv, Israel, and studied medicine at the Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem. After completing his internal medicine training at Hadassah Medical Center, Tomer joined the Digestive Diseases Institute at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, where he rose to the position of senior gastroenterologist in the IBD Center and led the gastro-genetic clinic, reflecting his specialization in gastrointestinal cancer genetics. In 2015, Tomer was named the “APF (American Healthcare Professionals and Friends for Medicine in Israel) Claire and Emmanuel G. Rosenblatt Fellow” and, with a scholarship from the Israel Medical Association, he travelled with his family to Boston, USA. From 2015–2017, Tomer successfully undertook a research fellowship in GI cancer genetics at the Gastroenterology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. During that time, he was accepted to the Harvard Catalyst Program in Clinical and Translational Science (PCaTS), now known as the Clinical and Translational (C/T) Academy. Tomer began an advanced fellowship in inflammatory bowel disease, also at Massachusetts General Hospital, in July 2017.
Tomer combined his clinical work with scientific research. His research interests included, among others, intestinal eotaxin-1 and its role in inflammatory bowel disease, developing a dual energy-based CT protocol for Crohn’s disease patients and establishing the inflammatory nature of portal hypertension. In 2013, he was awarded a UEG “National Scholar” award for his work on adipose tissue regulatory lymphocytes.
Tomer achieved much in the short time he was involved with UEG, always using his position to promote the education of young gastroenterologists across Europe. In 2014, during his time as a founder member of the UEG Young Talent Group (YTG), Tomer established the Young GI Angle in the UEG Journal. He also helped develop the concept for the Young GI Network Lounge and organise the first Young GI Network “Let’s Meet” event in Vienna during UEG Week 2014. When his time with the YTG came to an end, Tomer remained a “friend of YTG” for Israel and continued to volunteer his time and expertise, most recently by participating in the Young GI session “Check your CV: Tips and tricks from experts” at UEG Week 2017.
Tomer was also a member of the UEG E-learning team from its inception in 2014. His initial work for the E-learning team involved deconstructing the EBGH Blue Book curriculum in such a way that it could be used to plan which online courses to develop and to build up coverage of the field. He worked with several course authors in his capacity as Web Editor and contributed an online course of his own: “Clinical introduction to colorectal polyps.”
Most notably, we have Tomer to thank for the existence of the UEG Education “Mistakes in …” series. Tomer was persuasive in his belief that mistakes could be a force for good, providing an opportunity for young gastroenterologists to learn from the mistakes that were apparent to experts in their field. In January 2016, Tomer’s vision for the “Mistakes in …” series became a reality and it proved as popular as he predicted it would be. Since then the “Mistakes in …” series has gone from strength to strength, with print booklets distributed at UEG Week, translation of the articles into Turkish, and the first ever “Mistakes in …” session being held at UEG Week 2018.
Tomer will be remembered as a calm, wise, kind, humble, and insightful man, who had a great sense of humour and was a true pleasure to spend time with. He advocated for everyone to have equal opportunities and access, and was known as someone who had great ideas, delivered on his promises and was unafraid of making difficult decisions. European gastroenterology is far poorer for the loss of Tomer and all that he might have achieved in the future, but his memory and influence will live on in the many contributions he already made.