Medical College of Wisconsin Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery - Research Faculty, Advanced Practice Providers, and Staff
Nathan Carlson, MD
Dr. Carlson is a Fellow and is an Active Duty Army Lieutenant Colonel on special assignment to the Medical College of Wisconsin in efforts to improve military and civilian hospital cooperation as well as develop military surgeon combat surgical readiness. His research interests include combat surgical readiness, combat trauma and surgical simulation.
Thomas Carver, MD
Dr. Thomas Carver is an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. As an Acute Care Surgeon his clinical focus is Trauma, Emergency General Surgery, and Surgical Critical Care. His clinical research interests focus on thoracic trauma and the management of chest injuries, pain control following trauma and surgery, splenic injury diagnosis and management, ultrasound use in trauma, and surgical education.
Christopher Davis, MD, MPH
Dr. Christopher Davis is an Associate Professor of Surgery, Chair of the Injury Prevention Committee in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, and Associate Program Directory of the General Surgery Residency Program. He is State Chair of the Bleeding Control Initiative of Wisconsin and in addition to having coordinated teaching Stop the Bleed to thousands of Wisconsin citizens (including entire school districts), he co-authored the 2017 Assembly Joint Resolution 111 which passed unanimously in support of Stop the Bleed. His time is balanced with trauma/emergency general surgery care, clinical and translational research, medical student and surgery resident education, advocacy, legislation, and community engagement.
Marc de Moya, MD
Dr. de Moya is a Professor of Surgery and the Chief of the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. His research interests include thoracic trauma, traumatic brain injury, acute care surgery education, and resuscitation. His research methods are primarily focused on clinical outcomes in retrospective or prospective designs.
Terri deRoon-Cassini, PhD
Dr. deRoon-Cassini is a Professor of Surgery, Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, and the Institute for Health and Society. She is also the Executive Director of the Comprehensive Injury Center. Her research interests include neurobiological (neural mechanisms, endocannabinoids) and psychosocial risk factors for the development of PTSD, implementation and outcomes of multidisciplinary integrative care for trauma patients, PTSD and depression screening and treatment, impact of socioenvironmental stress (including racism) on mental health outcomes, and health disparities following injury, particularly for gun violence survivors.
Christopher Dodgion, MD, MSPH, MBA
Dr. Chris Dodgion is an Associate Professor of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery and serves as a Froedtert/MCW Associate Trauma Medical Director. Through global collaboration he seeks to strengthen trauma systems, expand quality improvement initiatives in low resource settings, and address the global surgical workforce shortage through education innovation. His research methods vary from geospatial mapping and analysis informing system and workforce planning to survey development/ implementation examining educational initiative impact. He is passionate about training the next generation of global and trauma surgery leaders.
Juan Figueroa, MD
Dr. Juan Figueroa is a foreign medical graduate from Ecuador who is working as a Research Fellow in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at MCW. His collaborative research alongside with our faculty aims at improving clinical outcomes in the injured patient, development of quality-of-life prediction models after traumatic brain injuries, and trauma system development in low- and middle-income countries, projects that have gained interest among the trauma community and have led him to present at local and national surgical meetings. His research methods include the use of registry data, prospective interventional studies, and qualitative research.
Katherine Flynn-O'Brien, MD, MPH
Timothy Geier, PhD
Dr. Timothy Geier is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. His research interests include biopsychosocial risk factors for the development of trauma-related conditions (e.g., PTSD) following traumatic injury and acute medical illness, PTSD and depression screening and treatment, impact of socioenvironmental stressors on mental health outcomes, and health disparities following injury and illness.
Daniel Holena, MD, MCSE
Dr. Holena is an Associate Professor of Surgery and serves as Director of Research for the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. His research interests include trauma systems, the use of audiovisual recordings to improve processes of care in trauma resuscitation, and the application of the Failure to Rescue (FTR) metric to trauma populations. His research methods primarily focus on the use of large datasets and on abstraction of video recordings in the trauma setting.
Katherine Iverson, MD, MPH
Dr. Katie Iverson is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Her research interests include global surgery, violence intervention and prevention, and trauma system development in low-resource settings. She has previously worked in Ethiopia and Peru through Harvard’s Program in Global Surgery and Social Change.
Christina Megal, NP, DNP
Dr. Christina Megal is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. She serves in the role of Clinical Director and APP Manager for the Wound Care Center and Ostomy Program. In addition to clinical and administrative responsibilities, research interests include the use of wound diagnostic technology, factors that impede wound healing, impact of topical therapies on wound healing, and nutrition.
Rachel Morris, MD
Dr. Rachel Morris is an Assistant Professor of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery and Associate Director of Research. My research interest is model guided decision support using machine learning. Specifically, direct applications include shared decision-making in older adults and optimization of the trauma triage process. Through mobile application invention and development, we focus on directly applying complex models to patient care. My research is currently funded through The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma.
Jacob Peschman, MD
Dr. Peschman is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and serves as the Chair of Froedtert’s Trauma Education Committee and as an Associate Program Director of the General Surgery Residency Program. His research interests include medical education, trauma, acute care surgery and critical care system and protocol development, and management of rib fractures. His research methods primarily focus on the use of registry data and prospective observational studies of educational interventions.
Courtney Pokrzywa, MD
Dr. Courtney Pokrzywa is a General Surgery Resident currently in her professional development year serving as one of our Research Fellows in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. She is currently involved in several projects centered around the evaluation and optimization of current clinical practices to improve patient outcomes. From large dataset, registry, and prospectively collected trauma and acute care surgery clinical outcomes projects to predictive modeling, model guided decision support, and hands-on clinical trials, she works alongside many of our Trauma and Acute Care Surgery faculty and MCW residents and provides mentorship to current medical students.
Andrew Schramm, PhD
Dr. Andrew Schramm is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. As a clinical and community psychologist, Dr. Schramm’s research interests include factors that impact the psychological adjustment of survivors of traumatic injury. He is particularly interested in the impact of social and environmental factors on recovery such as experiences of discrimination and economic inequity. A second major focus of Dr. Schramm’s research is suicide prevention, and he currently leads two grant-funded studies on suicide prevention in trauma centers. This work includes development of Practice Management Guidelines on suicide screening and intervention in trauma settings with the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST).
Colleen Trevino, NP, PhD
Dr. Colleen Trevino is an Assistant Professor of Surgery. Her research interests involve understanding the biopsychosocial mechanisms that modulate the transformation from acute to chronic pain after traumatic injury; including investigating predictors, biomarkers, and the stress response relationship with pain. Further interests include mindfulness as an intervention to treat acute pain, comprehensive care of gun violence survivors, and emergency general surgery guideline development.
