Presented by: Lisa Knowlton, MD, MPH, FACS, FRCSC, Associate Professor of Surgery, General Surgery, Stanford University

BIo: Dr. Knowlton is an Associate Professor of Surgery and an Acute Care Surgeon whose practice encompasses trauma surgery, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. She is an NIH and ARPA-H funded researcher whose focus is on improving access to innovative, high-quality surgical care. She obtained her medical degree at McGill University and completed her general surgery residency at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her desire to understand varied healthcare systems and develop policy solutions led her to obtain an M.P.H. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and complete a research fellowship at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. After training as a Surgical Critical Care fellow at Stanford University Medical Center, she joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Surgery in early 2018. She was promoted to Associate Professor in the University Medical Line in 2023. Her institutional leadership roles include serving as the Unit Based Medical Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, the Associate Vice Chair of Research for the Stanford Department of Surgery, the SHC Surgical AI Lead for Early Clinical Deterioration, and the Associate Program Director for the Surgical Critical Care fellowship.

Presented by: Christopher Stave, MLA, Information Services Librarian, caLane Medical Library

Clifford Sheckter, MD, MS, FACS, FABA

Bio

Dr. Cliff Sheckter grew up in the rural Eastern Sierra. He graduated from UCLA with a BS in Anthropology and earned summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He attended USC (Keck) for medical school on an academic scholarship and graduated valedictorian with Alpha Omega Alpha honors. He fell in love with burn care while at USC/LA General Medical Center and completed surgical training at Stanford. While in residency, he pursued a fellowship/postdoc in Health Systems Design at Stanford’s Clinical Excellence Research Center (CERC). He earned an MS in Health Policy from Stanford, focusing on health economics. He received additional training in Surgical Critical Care and Burn Surgery at the University of Washington.

Dr. Sheckter is a health services and health policy researcher. His work focuses on burn prevention and health economics in surgical care. He has authored over 155 articles and numerous book chapters. His research has been published in JAMA, JAMA Network Open, JAMA Surgery, Annals of Surgery, Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Burns, and Journal of Burn Care & Research. His work has been featured in USA Today and the New York Times. He was the recipient of a career development award from the NIH and has funding from the Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Sheckter was awarded the American Burn Association (ABA) Traveling Fellow for 2023 and has won top abstract at the ABA Annual Meeting multiple times. He is an active member of the ABA and Chairs the Burn Prevention Committee.

Dr. Sheckter is one of a few surgeons double-board certified in Surgical Critical Care and Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. He practices critical care medicine as an intensivist in the Stanford Surgical ICU. He is the Director of the Burn Center at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center which is the only burn/trauma center for the San Francisco Bay Area. He performs scar reconstruction using surgical and laser techniques.

Presented by: Elizabeth George, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery, Stanford University

Bio: Dr. George is a board-eligible vascular surgeon and health services researcher at Stanford. She earned her B.A., M.D., and M.S. in Health Policy from Stanford, where she also completed her residency. She specializes in complex vascular procedures and improving high-value surgical care for vulnerable, understudied patient populations.