The UAB Department of Surgery’s Professor Aurelio Galli, Ph.D., D.Sc., has been appointed as the Dr. Champ Lyons Endowed Chair in General Surgery and Associate Professor Britney Corey, M.D., MACM, FACS, has been selected for the Dr. Marshall Urist Professorship.
“Both Dr. Galli and Dr. Corey have made outstanding contributions in the Department of Surgery. This is truly an occasion to celebrate and commemorate their hard work,” says Fay Fletcher Kerner Endowed Chair of Surgery Herbert Chen, M.D., FACS.
Both positions are effective as of June 9, 2023.
Dr. Aurelio Galli
Galli, who serves as the director for gastrointestinal biology research, obtained his doctorate of science and philosophy in physiology from the State University of Milan, Italy. Upon graduation, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular physiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Galli’s main research emphasis is brain development and plasticity, with a focus on neurotransmitters and the implications of substance abuse. He serves as a researcher for the Department of Surgery’s Center for Inter-systemic Networks and Enteric Medical Advances (CINEMA), which seeks to understand how interactions between environmental factors and genetic predispositions, like gastrointestinal diagnoses coupled with anxiety, are related to Enteric Inter-systemic Disorders (ESD).
Known for his pioneering contributions to UAB’s Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, Dr. Champ Lyons served as professor and chair for the UAB Department of Surgery from 1950-1965.
Dr. Britney Corey
Corey, who serves as program director for the general surgery residency program, graduated from the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and completed both her general surgery residency and minimally invasive GI fellowship at UAB.
A 2021 recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, Corey exemplifies the department’s mission of providing outstanding and compassionate care to patients and is dedicated to the education and training of the next generation of surgeons.
Corey’s main research interests focus on the improvement of graduate medical education. To supplement her assessment research, she also earned a Master of Academic Medicine from the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.