Board of Directors
The Coalition for National Trauma Research seated its first Board of Directors in August 2020, following the restructuring of NTI as CNTR. The Board is comprised of members of Core organizations, along with one at-large member from among our Stakeholder organizations.
Board Officers
Ben Zarzaur, MD, MPH
Chair
Rachael Callcut, MD, MSPH
Vice Chair
Bellal Joseph, MD
Secretary/Treasurer
The ATS is excited to be partnering with CNTR to ensure the inclusion of survivors in trauma research.
Board of Directors

Eileen Bulger, MD, FACS
ACS-COT Representative (2020-2023)
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Rachael Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS
AAST Representative (2022-2025)
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Dr. Callcut has a long track record of extensive extramural research support including from the NIH, DoD, and industry sources. She is also the recipient of recent funding from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and holds a NIH R01 focused on Artificial Intelligence in trauma care. Prior to joining UC Davis, she served as Director of Data Science for the Center for Digital Health Innovation at UC San Francisco, where she was recognized as a surgeon-scientist with significant extramural funding from federal and industry sources, and as an innovator (licensed technology/provisional patents) in research and teaching mentorship. Dr. Callcut has published more than 80 peer reviewed publications and her research featured in over 50 news media publications in the last few years.

Angela Gibson, MD, PhD, FACS
ABA Representative (2021-2024)
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Dr. Gibson graduated from the Medical Scientist Training Program in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, where she also completed her surgical residency. Subsequently, she completed a visiting Burn Surgery fellowship at the University of California, Davis, and a fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at the University of Wisconsin.
Certified by the American Board of Surgery in General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care, Dr. Gibson specializes in burn, trauma, emergency surgery and surgical critical care and treats complex wounds. She is the Medical Director of Wound Healing Services at UW Health – a program that she developed. Her research interests focus on epithelial regeneration in burn injury, evaluation of advanced tissue products, human skin model development for wound healing, and understanding the burn wound microenvironment. Dr. Gibson leads a basic and translational science laboratory studying wound healing and clinical trials involving her burn patients.

Elliott Haut, MD, PhD, FACS
EAST Representative (2020-2023)
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Dr. Haut is Past-President of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST) and recently chaired the Guidelines Committee. He was lead author of a paper commissioned by the National Academies of Medicine titled “Military Trauma Care’s Learning Health System: The Importance of Data Driven Decision Making” which was used to support the report titled “A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths After Injury.” Dr. Haut was a member of the National Quality Forum (NQF) Trauma Outcomes Committee.

James Holmes, MD, FACS
ABA Representative (2022-2025)
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His clinical specialty is burn/acute care surgery, with research interests in the pathophysiology, treatment, & outcomes of burn injuries, as well as burn disaster/surge management. Dr. Holmes’ current research focus is the development of skin substitutes and other alternatives to standard autografting of burn wounds. Dr. Holmes is also the Director of the American Burn Association Burn Research Network (ABuRN) and chairs its Burn Science Advisory Panel (BSAP). His investigative work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Health & Human Services, and the Department of Defense.

Bellal Joseph, MD, FACS
WTA Representative (2021-2024)
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Raminder Nirula, MD, MPH, FACS
AAST Representative (2020-2023)
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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..

Jeffrey D. Kerby, MD, PhD, FACS
ACS-COT Representative (2022-2025)
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Jeffrey D. Kerby, MD, PhD, FACS is the Brigham Family Endowed Professor and Director of the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Kerby received his medical degree from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1989. He completed his surgical residency at UAB in 1999, along with a postdoctoral research fellowship in 1996.
Following residency, Dr. Kerby served in the United States Air Force as an active duty surgeon until 2003, deploying as a combat trauma surgeon in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2002. Dr. Kerby returned to UAB in 2003. An active researcher, Dr. Kerby served as the principal investigator for the Alabama Resuscitation Center of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, an NIH funded multicenter research network focused on prehospital clinical trials in trauma and cardiac arrest, from 2005 through 2015. In addition, his division has a robust clinical trials and trauma outcomes effort established through the UAB Center for Injury Sciences and participates as an active investigative site for the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN).
Dr. Kerby also current serves as the Trauma Consultant for the Office of Emergency Medical Services in the Alabama Department of Public Health. He has served on the American College of Surgeons Central Committee on Trauma (COT) since 2016 and was appointed Chair of the COT in 2022.

Ben Zarzaur, MD, MPH, FACS
EAST Representative (2022-2025)
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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.

Margaret Knudson, MD, FACS
Stakeholder Member At-Large Representative (2022-2023)
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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.