Richard M. Satava, MD FACS, is Professor Emeritus of Surgery at University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle),.
Prior positions include Professor of Surgery at Yale University, military appointment as Professor of Surgery (USUHS) Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Program Manager at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Senior Science Advisor at US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in Ft. Detrick, MD. Undergraduate training was Johns Hopkins University, medical school at Hahnemann University of Philadelphia, internship at Cleveland Clinic, surgical residency at Mayo Clinic with a Master of Surgical Research. During 23 years of military surgery he has been an active flight surgeon, an Army astronaut candidate, MASH surgeon for the Grenada Invasion, and a hospital commander during Desert Storm, all the while continuing clinical surgical practice.
He has served on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Committee on Health, Food and Safety. He is on numerous committees of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), is past-president of many surgical societies, on the editorial board of numerous surgical and scientific journals, and active in numerous engineering societies. He has been continuously active in surgical education and surgical research, with more than 200 publications and book chapters in diverse areas of advanced surgical technology, including Surgery in the Space Environment, Video and 3-D imaging, Architecture for the Next Generation of Healthcare, Plasma Medicine, Telepresence Surgery, Virtual Reality Surgical Simulation, and Objective Assessment of Surgical Competence and Training.