Keynote Speaker: Eric Elster

Eric Elster, MD, FACS, CAPT, MC, USN (Ret.) is the Dean of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) School of Medicine. Dr. Elster received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of South Florida in Tampa as a scholarship recipient under the U.S. Navy’s Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). As a Navy officer, Dr. Elster served as ship’s surgeon aboard the USS Kitty Hawk during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After returning from the Persian Gulf, he completed a solid organ transplantation fellowship at the National Institutes of Health; and then directed a translational research program at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring, MD, with a focus on developing improved diagnostics and therapies for serious traumatic injuries, transplantation, and advanced operative imaging. He was last deployed as a surgeon and Director of Surgical Services at the NATO Role 3 Military Medical Unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Now retired from the Navy, Dr. Elster serves as Executive Co-Chair of the Military Health System Strategic Partnership American College of Surgeons (MHSSPACS). He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (England). He is also a member of the Society of University Surgeons, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the Southern Surgical Association, the Halsted Society, and the American Surgical Association. Dr. Elster has published over 200 scientific articles in leading journals including JAMA, Annals of Surgery, American Journal of Transplantation, and Science Translational Medicine; and has received numerous grants for research spanning all aspects of surgery.