Also the director of the General Surgery Residency Program at VCU’s School of Medicine, Kaplan has been consistently nominated as the “Best Attending” by his residents and third- and fourth-year medical students. He was selected as one of Richmond Magazine’s “Top Docs” in 2010 for colon and rectal surgery and earned the highest votes in surgical oncology. Kaplan is an expert in the treatment of cancers of the liver, pancreas, bile ducts, stomach, esophagus and colon, as well as of melanomas and sarcomas. He has been the lead investigator on clinical research trials on pancreatic cancer.