Stanford Dept. of Surgery

Please join us in welcoming Maria Eugenia Smith, our new Manager for the Division of General Surgery!

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Nazish Sayed to the farm! Dr. Sayed will be an Assistant Professor of Vascular Surgery and the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute starting January 16th.

Congratulations to Caitlin Bell, MD, a clinical fellow in the Division of Vascular Surgery's Leeper Lab, on being chosen as a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Physician-Scientist Fellow!! The awardees will participate in a two- to three-year program, gaining immersive experience in laboratory and computational biomedical research. Bell is one of seven early-career physicians selected from Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco for the program. The other fellow from Stanford is Matthew Schwede, MD from the Department of Hematology/Oncology.

Congratulations to Dr. Yewande Alimi on receiving the Hilary Sanfey Outstanding Resident Award from the Association of Women Surgeons Foundation. Dr. Alimi completed her internship and residency in General Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington DC before coming to Stanford Surgery to do her fellowship in MIS. Awesome work!

Congratulations to Dr. Modupeola Diyaolu!!! Dr. Diyaoliu is the winner of the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2020 Special Child Abuse Award for her work on Black Children are Disproportionately Identified as Victims of Child Abuse: A National Trauma Data Bank Study. Dr. Dilaolu is a fellow in the Division of Pediatric Surgery.

Congratulations to Vascular Surgery Resident Dr. Ken Tran on receiving the 2021 VESS/Medtronic Resident Research Award! The $12,500 will fund his research entitled Patient-specific computational fluid dynamics modeling for assessing the hemodynamic performance of complex endovascular aneurysm repair over the next year. Tran has also been invited to present his research at the 2022 VESS Winter Annual Meeting. "Beautifully written proposal that is innovative, timely/relevant with excellent prelim[inary] data," wrote Dr. Dawn Coleman in her review of Tran's submission.

Chief Resident Dr. Jared Forrester spent his professional development years developing a system to reduce surgical site infections in Ethiopia. Early results of the program (now dubbed Clean Cut) were recently published in the British Journal of Surgery. Read his story: https://scopeblog.stanford.edu//reducing-surgical-site-in/

Congratulations to Dr. Stephanie Chao on being accepted into the OFDD's Junior Leadership Bootcamp Series. "I want to be a leader that builds others up along with her, to build teams that people want to join rather than have to. Hopefully, this workshop will help!" said Chao.

Congratulations to Lifebox and PI Dr. Tom Weiser on receiving a Gates Grand Challenge Award!!!! The $300,000 in funds from the UBS Optimus Foundation will support a cluster-randomized, stepped wedge trial of Lifebox's Clean Cut Program adopted for cesarean delivery. "We will be running this at 10 facilities (5 clusters of 2 hospitals each) in Ethiopia," wrote Weiser. "We have partnered with the Ethiopian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and they are very excited, and our ground team is keen as well."

Dr. Arash Momeni and his co-authors have received the best paper award for their manuscript A Matched-Pair Analysis of Prepectoral with Subpectoral Breast Reconstruction from Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery! According to the journal's Editor-in-Chief, Rod J. Rohrich, MD, this "paper was, by a distinct margin, the best paper in [its] category." Congratulations!!!

Yayayayayay! Another Stanford Surgery baby!!!!! Congratulations to Mom and Dad

Congratulations to Suleman Khan, a third-year Stanford medical student, who has been awarded the 2020 Dorothy Dee and Marjorie Helene Boring Trust Award under the guidance of Surgery faculty: Drs. Oliver Aalami, Carla Pugh, and Ronald Dalman!!! The Boring Trust Research Award supports Stanford Medical Students to spearhead independent research projects aiming to transform cardiovascular care. It provides students with $15,000 over the course of a year to be applied towards re...search and educational expenses. Suleman's project, entitled Vascular1, aims to combine artificial intelligence and virtual reality to teach medical students and surgical residents ultrasound-guided vascular access (USGVA) strategies. USGVA is often learned on patients who suffer unnecessary complications or through expensive mannequins. Through Vascular1 and affordable Oculus Quest VR headsets, medical trainees will dynamically learn the hand-eye coordination skills required for safe USGVA. Suleman's project will also include an educational study of trainees to compare pre- and post-training performance with Vascular1 with the hope of distributing the platform to other institutions.

Congratulations to Department Chair Dr. Mary Hawn on being elected vice president of the Halsted Society! Hawn will ascend to the presidency in September 2021. "It is a true hone and further cements the relationship between Dr. Halsted and Dr. Emile Holman and Stanford University," said Hawn. Holman, Stanford Surgery's founding chair, was Halsted's last resident. "I'm proud to be the fourth Stanford faculty [member] who will preside over this meeting." Hawn follows in th...e footsteps of Drs. JBD Marks, Tom Krummel and Sherry Wren. "It is an incredible honor to be elected to the leadership of the Halsted Society. The society represents leaders in academic surgery from around the US and is dedicated to surgical scholarship and fellowship," said Wren, who was president in 2017. Drs. Carla Pugh, director of the TECI Center, and Electron Kebebew, chief of the division of general surgery, both activated their memberships at the 2020 meeting, and Dr. Carlos Esquivel, division chief of the division of abdominal transplant, was elected to the membership as well. #wimMonth #StanfordWIM #HerTimeIsNow

Congratulations Dr. Auriel August to on her appointment to the ACS's new Cancer Standard Surgery Program (CSSP) Education Committee! The CCSP debuted in July of this year with the goal of improving surgical care through the development and implementation of new technical standards. Educating surgeons, trainees, and staff on those new quality measures will be a keep component to success. "We are still determining who will focus on which areas in the committee (we just had our kickoff call last week!), but I will likely be focusing on resident and fellow education aspect," said August.

Join us Monday, September 21st at 11AM PST for a special Women in Medicine Month event featuring Emergency Medicine Department Chair Dr. Andra Blomkalns and our own Dr. Mary Hawn. This informal conversation is sure to span a myriad of topics from how they deal with gender discrimination to how they're leading their departments through the ongoing pandemic. All are welcome! Register here: http://bit.ly/2chairsconvo

Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Stoltz, who has been selected by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub to participate in their Physician-Scientist Fellowship Program! According to their website, the program is a "research-intensive experience for 2436 months in the laboratory of a faculty mentor at one of CZ Biohub’s three collaborating campuses." "I will be working in the lab of Dr. Steve Quake doing translational research using newly-developed genome sequencing techniques to investigate possible infectious etiologies/contributors to the development of biliary atresia," said Stoltz.

Over the past week, residents from our three programs (general, plastics, and vascular) shared their experiences in the first-annual #SUresidentTakeover on Twitter. Here are a few of their images showing life at Stanford Surgery:

Congratulations to GenSurg Resident Dr. Raja Narayan! Dr. Narayan has been awarded a 2020 Alpha Omega Alpha (AA) Postgraduate Fellowship. The fellowship provides $2,000 to support his research. "Building on our work using AI to predict poor post-transplant outcomes, we now aim to define neuroendocrine tumor biology for patients with resected liver metastases using AI," said Narayan. "Our goal is to identify specific treatment strategies for a patient’s idiosyncratic pattern of disease."

Vote for Stanford!!! Thanks to everyone's amazing participation and enthusiasm, our team has made it to Round 3 of AWS Research Madness!!! This round consists of 8 min presentations, featuring each project’s background, methods, results, and conclusions.... Vote here: https://redcap.uhhospitals.org/redcap/surveys/?s=T987E43Y73 - For 'Voting Round,' select 'Full Presentation' - Select 'Live Session 2- Wednesday, September 2' - Stanford is Group #4, Presentation #16: Creating a Novel Biologic Implant for Breast Reconstruction: The Omental Fat-Augmented Free Flap (O-FAFF) - Please use the sliding scales to assign votes to the presentation. Presentations with the highest average within each group will move on to the Finals. The top four authors will be invited to a special Q&A session on September 28th and awarded with cash prizes and an invitation to submit your work to "American Journal of Surgery." Voting closes this Friday, September 4 at 11:59pm ET!

Congrats Dr. August!