Dr. Joseph is the Martin Gluck Endowed Professor of Surgery, Professor of Neurosurgery, Chief of the Division of Trauma, Critical Care, Burns & Emergency Surgery, at the University of Arizona. He is also the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Surgery. Dr. Joseph has authored over 260 peer reviewed publications and 20+ books chapters. His research has been funded by the NIA, DOD and DARPA. His areas of expertise encompass traumatic brain injury, coagulopathy in trauma patients, frailty and geriatric trauma. Dr. Joseph is a member of numerous national associations, he is Executive Director of GeriTrac for the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and vice chair of Committee on Trauma in the State of Arizona. Dr. Joseph, is also a member of the steering committee of the National Trauma Research Action Plan (NTRAP)..

Dr. Nirula was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He attended Queen’s University (BA, Life Sciences), University of Manitoba (MD), Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital (General Surgery Residency), and University of Washington/Harborview Medical Center (Surgical Critical Care Fellowship/MPH).

He currently serves as Chief, Division of General Surgery and Head of the Acute Care Surgery Section at the University of Utah. He has served on the Board of Managers of the AAST as well as a past Chair of the AAST MITC. Dr. Nirula’s clinical interests lie in general surgery with a specific interest in chronic pain from rib fractures, hernias, abdominal wall reconstruction, emergency and urgent surgical conditions..

Ronald M. Stewart graduated from medical school and completed his surgical residency at UT Health San Antonio. He then completed a Trauma and Surgical Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. He returned to San Antonio in 1993 as the Director of the Trauma Service. Dr. Stewart has served as the Board Chair of the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council for Trauma since 1996. In 1999 he was awarded the Faculty Member of the Year Award from The University Health System. That same year he and the Shattered Dreams development team were awarded the Bronze Quill for writings on the award winning injury prevention program Shattered Dreams/D.E.A.D. (Drinking and Driving End All Dreams).

In 2000, Governor George W. Bush appointed Dr. Stewart to the Governor’s Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Advisory Council where he served until 2014. He was the chair of the South Texas Chapter of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma for six years, and followed for another six years as the ACS COT Region VI Chief (Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas). He currently serves as the Chair of the ACS Committee on Trauma. Dr. Stewart was a founding member and the first Chair of the National Trauma Institute. 
At UT Health San Antonio he is a tenured Professor of Surgery and Anesthesia, and since 2008, he has served as the Chair of the Department of Surgery, holding the Dr. Witten B. Russ Chair in Surgery.

Dr. Stewart has received numerous awards for teaching and service. A partial listing of these includes the Presidential Award for Clinical Excellence (2004), the Distinguished Alumnus of the UT Health San Antonio School of Medicine (2005) and the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award (2007). 

In 2013 he was the recipient of the National Safety Council Surgeons Award for Service to Safety and the American College of Surgeon’s Arthur Ellenberger Award for Excellence in State Advocacy. 

He is a member of the American Surgical Association, the Southern Surgical Association, the Western Surgical Association, Immediate Past President of the Southwestern Surgical Congress and the Secretary of the Texas Surgical Society.

Dr. Zarzaur attended college at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. He went on to medical school at The University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Zarzaur completed residency training in General Surgery at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.

After residency, Dr. Zarzaur completed a Surgical Critical Care fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. While there, Dr. Zarzaur earned a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 2006 he moved back to Memphis and became an Associate Professor of Surgery at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Dr. Zarzaur received a K23 Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of socio-economic disparities in quality of life and functional ability after injury. He has also been the Principal Investigator of an 11-site multi-institutional study funded by the National Trauma Institute to determine long-term outcomes after blunt spleen injury in adults. In 2014, he was recruited to Indiana University School of Medicine as the Founder and Director of the Center for Outcomes Research in the Department of Surgery. While at Indiana University School of Medicine, he served as the Vice-Chair of Clinical Research as well as the Chief of Surgery and Trauma Medical Director at Eskenazi Health. Dr. Zarzaur joined the faculty in the Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in 2019.

Currently, Dr. Zarzaur is funded by the National Institutes of Health to study the effectiveness of collaborative care interventions at improving long-term outcomes in older injured patients. In addition to his research interests, he has also served as a member and leader in many local, regional and national trauma organizations. He has served as the Chair of the Tennessee Committee on Trauma as well as the Chair of the Trauma Care Advisory Council. He was a member of the Indiana Department of Health Trauma Advisory Council. Currently, he is a member of the National Committee on Trauma.  While in Memphis, Dr. Zarzaur was a medical team manager for an Urban Search and Rescue Team and has been deployed as part of disaster response.

Dr. Knudson is a professor of surgery at the University of California and a trauma surgeon at the San Francisco General Trauma Center. She has held leadership positions in the AAST and the WTA and has spent 17 years on the ACS Committee on Trauma, including four years as the Vice Chair for the central COT.

Dr. Knudson was on the original Board of Directors for the National Trauma Institute (predecessor to CNTR) and served as the Science Director, overseeing 16 research projects. She is currently the PI of a large multi-center research grant focusing on post-traumatic pulmonary embolism. This grant (CLOTT) is administered by CNTR and funded by the Department of Defense, and more recently it has expanded to include support from PCORI and NIH. In addition to VTE, Dr. Knudson’s other research interests include injury prevention and combat casualty care. As the Medical Director of the Military Health System Partnership with the American College of Surgeons, she oversees a program that focuses on quality of care in Military Treatment Facilities, education and training for deploying surgeons, and the establishment of military-civilian partnerships to maintain readiness.