Richard Satava

Richard Satava, MD, FACS, is Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. Prior academic positions include Professor of Surgery at Yale University and a military appointment as Professor of Surgery in the Army Medical Corps assigned to General Surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Government positions included Program Manager of Advanced Biomedical Technology at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Senior Science Advisor at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in Ft. Detrick, Maryland and Director of the NASA/Yale University Commercial Space Center for Medical Informatics and Technology Applications His undergraduate training was at Johns Hopkins University, Medical School at Hahnemann University of Philadelphia, Internship at the Cleveland Clinic, Surgical Residency at the Mayo Clinic, and a Fellowship with a Master of Surgical Research at Mayo Clinic. He has served on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Committee on Health, Food and Safety and was also awarded the Department of Defense prestigious Legion of Merit. He has been a member of numerous committees of the American College of Surgeons, currently serving on the Committee on Emerging Surgical Technologies and Education and ACS-Accredited Education Institutes. He is a past president of the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons , the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, and the Society of Medical Innovation and Therapy. He was on the Board of Governors of the National Board of Medical Examiners and is currently on Board of a many surgical societies and on the editorial board of numerous surgical and scientific journals, and active in a number of surgical and engineering societies. Dr. Satava was the surgeon on the project that developed the first surgical robot, which later became the DaVinci Surgical Robot. In addition, as a government official, he funded all of the surgical robot development for the first 10 years, until commercialization became possible. For 5 years he was a consultant to NASA in surgical robotics. Now Dr. Satava has added being continuously active in surgical education and surgical research, with more than 200 publications and book chapters in diverse areas of advanced surgical technology, including Surgery in the Space Environment, Video and 3-D imaging, Telepresence Surgery, Virtual Reality Surgical Simulation, and Objective Assessment of Surgical Competence and Training and the Moral and Ethical Impact of Advanced Medical Technologies. During his 23 years of military surgery he has been an active flight surgeon, an Army astronaut candidate, MASH surgeon for the Grenada Invasion, and a hospital commander during Desert Storm, all the while continuing clinical surgical practice. Current research is focused on advanced technologies to formulate the architecture for the next generation of clinical Medicine, education and training.