Patch is a board-certified surgeon whose clinical and research interests include general and laparoscopic surgery; gastrointestinal surgery, including gallbladder disease and fistulas; difficult and recurrent hernias; and surgical infectious diseases. 

Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Surgery, University of Washington

Traci is a colorectal surgeon and health services researcher with extensive experience in clinical trials and comparative effectiveness research.  Her research interests over the past decade has focused on improving postoperative outcomes in patients undergoing colorectal surgery, particularly through prevention of Surgical Site Infection and dissemination of Enhanced Recovery Protocols.  She has been recognized as a national leader in the field of Enhanced Recovery, serving on the board of the American Society of Enhanced Recovery (ASER) and the editorial board of Anesthesia and Analgesia.  She serves as the Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs and Quality for the Department of Surgery and the Co-Director of the Enhanced Recovery after Surgery Program at the University of Virginia, which has been featured by the American College of Surgeons, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News and World Reports.

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Virginia

Shuai Huang enjoys working with healthcare professionals for formulating complex healthcare problems analytically and pursuing data-driven solutions for effective management of these problems. He develops methodologies for modeling, monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis of complex networked systems such as the brain connectivity networks, social networks, and disease progression process of Type 1 diabetes and other progressive diseases that have multiple stages and pathways. He also develops novel statistical and data mining models to integrate the massive heterogeneous datasets such as neuroimaging, genomics, proteomics, laboratory tests, demographics, and clinical variables, for facilitating scientific discoveries in biomedical research and better decision-making in clinical practices. More information can be found in shuaihuang.info. 

Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Washington

Dan is the CDC Project Officer for ASSIST. He is a medical epidemiologist and the Surveillance Branch Chief in CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP). He joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1984 and has worked in environmental health, injury prevention and control, informatics, and infectious diseases programs. In 2004 he moved to his current position as chief of the branch in DHQP responsible for national surveillance of healthcare-associated infections and other adverse events in healthcare, risk and protective factors, and antimicrobial use and resistance.

Surveillance Branch Chief, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion Centers for Diease Control and Prevention

Aven’s primary research interests are in the areas of machine learning and data fusion with a focus on dictionary learning; computer vision and social signal processing, with a focus on applications of these methods to healthcare. Aven enjoys working with medical professionals to translate and formulate healthcare problems. She is hoping to build effective monitoring algorithms to monitor degenerative patient conditions which is crucial for many clinical decision-making problems.

PhD Candidate, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Washington

Rob Sawyer is Chair of the Department of Surgery at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine. Prior to moving to Western Michigan in 2017, he was C. Bruce Morton Professor of Surgery, vice chair for Clinical Affairs and Quality, and chief of the Division of Acute Care Surgery and Outcomes Research in the Department of Surgery at the University of Virginia.

Chair, Department of Surgery, Western Michigan University

Dr Semple is an internationally recognized clinician, and scientist. He is respected clinician with major leadership roles in numerous societies and organizations. Dr Semple’s surgical practice at Women’s College Hospital focuses on breast surgery and breast reconstruction. He has a long-standing track record of excellence in innovation and creative thinking. His research interests are varied and include developing appropriate and affordable mobile and smart phone technology for health care and high altitude meteorology and the impact of global warming in the Himalaya.

Professor, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, University of Toronto

Joe Sharma specializes in thyroid and parathyroid surgery, adrenal gland surgery, and pancreatic endocrine tumors. He is very active in the Department of Surgery's quality and safety efforts. In October 2016, Dr. Sharma was appointed chief quality officer of the Department of Surgery.

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, Emory University School of Medicine

Dr. Chernetsky Tejedor is a trained engineer, clinical informaticist and practicing hospitalist.  She is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the Emory University School of Medicine and serves as Medical Informatics Advisor for the Surveillance Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Her most recent roles were as the first Emory Chief Research Information Officer and Medical Director of Analytics where she was responsible for the health system’s multi-mission analytics strategy. She served for many years as a voting member on the CDC’s HICPAC (Healthcare Infection Control Practice Advisory Council). Her areas of interest include workflow optimization, quality improvement, human factors the intersections with informatics.  Her teams’ original work on using the electronic health record for device tracking of idle central catheters is a key citation in the “Choosing Wisely Campaign”.

Associate Professor, Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, Emory University & Medical Informatics Advisor, CDC

Elizabeth Wick is a colorectal surgeon experienced in treating the entire spectrum of colorectal conditions. She joined the faculty at UCSF in 2016 after spending eight years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins Hospital. From front-line clinical care, to research, program implementation, and quality measurement, Dr. Wick has contributed to almost every phase of improving perioperative care.

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco