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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

Angela Gibson, MD

Secretary/Treasurer

The ATS is excited to be partnering with CNTR to ensure the inclusion of survivors in trauma research.

Anna Newcomb, PhD, LCSW

President - 2022, American Trauma Society

Board of Directors

Eileen Bulger, MD, FACS

Eileen Bulger, MD, FACS

ACS-COT Representative (2020-2023)

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Eileen Bulger, MD, is Chief of Trauma at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She has previously served on the editorial boards of Surgical Research, Surgical Infections, Shock Journal, and Prehospital Emergency Care. Dr. Bulger has served as a Principal Investigator on five multi-site studies and as the Site PI on 11 multi-site studies. Her research focus involves advancements in pre-hospital care and the early resuscitation of injured patients. She was co-investigator of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC), and directed its Data Coordinating Center.
Rachael Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS

Rachael Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS

AAST Representative (2022-2025)

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Rachael A Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS, a nationally recognized expert in trauma care and data science/health services research, is the current Vice Chair of Clinical Sciences in the Department of Surgery, the Director of Trauma Research, and holds a major institutional leadership role as the inaugural Chief Research Informatics Officer (CRIO) at the University of California- Davis Health. She is a practicing clinician double board certified in General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. As the institutional CRIO, Dr. Callcut oversees the clinical research informatics strategy and enterprise research data governance for all UC Davis clinicians, researchers, faculty and staff.

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

Angela Gibson, MD, PhD, FACS

ABA Representative (2021-2024)

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Angela Gibson, MD, PhD, FACS, is Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Division of Acute Care and Regional General Surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Medical Director, UW Health Wound Healing Services.

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

Elliott Haut, MD, PhD, FACS

EAST Representative (2020-2023)

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Elliott Richard Haut, MD, PhD, FACS is Vice Chair of Quality, Safety, & Service in the Department of Surgery at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He also has a faculty appointment in the Department of Health Policy & Management at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is certified in both General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care by the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Haut’s clinical practice at The Johns Hopkins Hospital covers all aspects of trauma and acute care surgery, as well as surgical critical care. Dr. Haut is a core faculty member in the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, as well as dozens of invited editorials, books and chapters.

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

James Holmes, MD, FACS

ABA Representative (2022-2025)

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Dr. Holmes is a Professor of Surgery at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the Director of the Burn Center at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, with appointments in the Department of General Surgery and the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX and trained in General Surgery at the Virginia Mason Medical Center, including an Immunology Research Fellowship at the Virginia Mason Research Center/Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle, WA. Subsequently, he completed fellowships in Burn Surgery at the University of Washington Harborview Medical Center and Trauma/Surgical Critical Care at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.

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. 

Raminder Nirula, MD, MPH, FACS

Raminder Nirula, MD, MPH, FACS

AAST Representative (2020-2023)

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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..

Jeffrey D. Kerby, MD, PhD, FACS

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

Ben Zarzaur, MD, MPH, FACS

EAST Representative (2022-2025)

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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.

Margaret Knudson, MD, FACS

Margaret Knudson, MD, FACS

Stakeholder Member At-Large Representative (2022-2023)

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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.