Influencers & Innovators

Moffitt Cancer Center's CEO at historical forefront of new treatments

Dr. Patrick Hwu is a decadeslong researcher who sees the Tampa center's mission as extending and improving the lives of cancer patients.

By Louis Llovio
| 5:00 a.m. September 4, 2026

Patrick Hwu, the president and CEO of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, was a researcher who helped developed the science behind immunotherapies to fight cancer.

Tampa Bay-Lakeland

Influencer intel

Along with being a preeminent cancer researcher, Dr. Patrick Hwu is an accomplished musician. He started playing piano as a kid and has fronted bands his entire career. At Moffitt, he is part of the ReMissions, a band made up of mostly doctors. Hwu says in eighth grade he told his parents he wanted to pursue a life in music. It did not go well. His father, who went by Mark after moving to the U.S. from China, was a chemical engineer. His mother, who went by Margaret, was a stay-at-home mother who’d studied chemistry in college. “My immigrant Chinese dad, he started screaming at me, he started throwing stuff, he started saying, ‘You're going to starve! You can't go into music,’” Hwu says and laughs. “I mean, he’s the one who made me take piano lessons in the first place.”