Dr. Jonathan Black is an assistant professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. His areas of interest included trauma systems, quality improvement, and surgical critical care. In addition to his work as a surgeon and intensivist, Dr. Black is also an Associate Principal in the UAB Clinical Transformation Office where he uses systems-based problem solving to improve healthcare delivery at UAB. 

Current projects include:

• Advarra IRB - Non-Invasive Monitoring of Traumatic Brain Injury Progression Using The Infrascanner 1 (MOBI-1)
• Non-Invasive Monitoring of Traumatic Brain Injury Progression Using the Infrascanner (MOBI)

Dr. Shannon Carroll, Shannon is an associate professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Carroll is an ATLS Instructor and active researcher. Her research activities include operative management of thoracic wall injuries, peptic ulcer prophylaxis, foreign body ingestion of toys, VATS vs. chest tube, FFP-only transfusion, and thrombotic events. She is also interested in motor vehicle crash injury prevention. Since 2010, UAB has been designated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as a medical center for the Crash Injury Research Engineering Network (CIREN) Program. The mission of the CIREN is to improve the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of motor vehicle crash injuries to reduce deaths, disabilities, and human and economic costs. Dr. Carroll is the trauma surgeon lead for CIREN.

Dr. Daniel Cox is a professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery and serves as the Chief of the Trauma Service and the Trauma Medical Director. His research interests include surgical critical care, trauma systems, and military medicine. Cox is a former active-duty Air Force surgeon assigned as the medical director for en route care in the Office of the Command Surgeon, Air Mobility Command. Cox has completed several military deployments, most notably serving as trauma czar, chief of surgery and surgical services flight commander at Craig Joint Theater Hospital in Bagram, Afghanistan. In 2022, he was promoted to full Colonel.

His current research project is:

• Prospective Evaluation of VR as an Educational Tool - Medical Simulation Training for SOST Advanced Resuscitative Care

Dr. Rondi Gelbard is an associate professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. She also serves as the Medical Director for Surgery/ Surgical Critical Care and Chief of the Critical Care Service. Her research areas include critical care, emergency general surgery, surgery education research, biomarkers, and wound healing. Dr. Gelbard's ongoing research projects include single center studies focused on outcomes of traumatic brain injury to large multi-center trials on the management of complex trauma patients. She is currently a principal investigator on a Department of Defense-funded prospective observational study correlating outcomes data with biomarker information to develop validated predictive models and clinical decision support tools for the management of severe abdominal trauma. She is the Associate Director of the Evidence Synthesis Unit of the UAB Center for Injury Science.

To view her current research projects, visit the UAB Center for Injury Science website.

Current projects include:

• Current Practice Patterns in Antibiotic Duration in Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infection: A Surgical Infection Society Multicenter Study
• Blood transfusion practices for hemorrhagic shock
• Outcomes after splenic angioembolization
• Early calcium replacement after minimal blood transfusion
• Associations between microbial bioburden, microbiome diversity and recovery after abdominal trauma

Dr. Zain Hashmi is an assistant professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Dr. Hashmi’s research focuses on trauma systems development, quality improvement and application of quantitative methods for trauma benchmarking. 

Current projects include:

• Direct versus Indirect Transport of Injured Patients to Definitive Trauma Center Care
• Healthcare disparities in the receipt of guideline-concordant blood product resuscitation among patients in hemorrhagic shock following injury
• Mitigating Injury Disparities with Evidence Based Trauma Systems Planning
• Perceived Barriers Regarding the Use of Telemedicine to Improve Trauma Triage in Alabama
• Regional Blood Product Availability for Trauma Care in Alabama
• UPitt IRB - Type O Whole blood and assessment of AGE during prehospital Resuscitation (TOWAR) Trial
• Using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) nationwide databases to Study Epidemiology, Referral Patterns, Patient Injury and Hospital Factors, Geographic Factors, Quality of Care, Trauma Systems and Discharge Destinations Associated with Trauma Health Outcomes

Dr. Kimberly Hendershot is a professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Her research interests include trauma systems, surgical critical care, and trauma and surgical education. She serves as the Co-Director for the UAB Women in Surgery Program.

Current projects include:

• Chest Tube Education
• Seasonal and Geographic Variation in Mechanism of Trauma
• UAB Surgery Boot Camp: An Intern Prep Course for Students Pursuing a Surgical Residency

Dr. Jan Jansen is a professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. He serves as director of research for the division, director of the UAB Center for Injury Science (CIS), and associate vice chair for clinical trials for the UAB Department of Surgery. Dr. Jansen’s principal research interest is clinical trials. He has particular expertise in the evaluation of complex interventions, and Bayesian trial designs. He was the chief investigator of the "UK Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta" (UK-REBOA) trial, and is the principal investigator of the "Trauma Resuscitation with Group O Whole Blood Or Products" (TROOP) and "Trauma And Prothrombin Complex Concentrate" (TAP) trials. 

To view his current research projects, visit the UAB Center for Injury Science website.

Dr. Jeffrey Kerby is the Director of the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery and the Brigham Family Endowed Professor in Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Following his surgical residency, Dr. Kerby served in the United States Air Force as an active duty surgeon until 2003, deploying as a combat trauma surgeon in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2002. Dr. Kerby returned to UAB in 2003. Since his return, he has served as a clinically active acute care surgeon and was the chief of general surgery at the Birmingham VA Medical Center from 2009 through 2014. An active researcher, Dr. Kerby served as the principal investigator for the Alabama Resuscitation Center of the Resuscitation Outcomes Center network, an NIH-funded multicenter trials network focused on outcomes of hospital clinical trials in trauma and cardiac arrest from 2005 through 2015. Dr. Kerby has established military-civilian partnerships between UAB and the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army, developing trauma-training programs for Air Force Pararescue personnel and Army 18 Deltas. In addition, the Division of Acute Care Surgery hosts three teams of Air Force Special Operations Surgeons on a permanent basis through a training affiliation agreement with Air Force Special Operations Command. Dr. Kerby serves on the Editorial Board of Shock and The American Journal of Surgery. Dr. Kerby’s clinical interests include trauma, critical care, and emergency general surgery. His research interests are focused on interventional trials in the pre-hospital emergency care setting. A current focus of his research interests is the effect of blood storage age on outcomes in trauma patients.  His collaborative group has published extensively in this area and has investigated potential mechanisms of the blood storage lesion through NIH-funded research. A major area of emphasis currently is on clinical trial development to evaluate the effect of blood storage age on clinical outcomes in trauma patients requiring large blood volume replacement. In addition, his group has a robust trauma outcomes effort through the UAB Center for Injury Sciences (CIS) and participates as an active investigative site in the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN). In 2022, Dr. Kerby became Chair of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma.

To view his current research projects, visit the UAB Center for Injury Science website.

Dr. Virginia Pierce is an associate professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Her areas of interest includes acute care surgery and resident and medical student education.  She is currently running a study entitled "Evaluating the impact of an Acute Care Surgery service on emergency general surgery workload and outcomes."

Dr. Jillian Richter is an associate professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. she is the Co-Director of Short-Term Research Experiences Advancing Medical Students (STREAMS). Her areas of interest include trauma, hemorrhage, resuscitation, endothelial glycocalyx, lung injury, bioengineered in vitro models, mechanotransduction signaling. Her Richter Lab is focused on understanding the role of the endothelial glycocalyx in regulating injury severity and outcomes in trauma patients. In combination with established animal models of trauma-hemorrhage and resuscitation (THR), her team utilizes custom-designed bioengineered cell culture systems to study the effect of mechanotransduction signaling on THR-related endotheliopathy, microvascular dysfunction and organ injury. Their research efforts are aimed at the identification of therapeutic strategies to prevent glycocalyx damage or restore loss of glycocalyx function caused by THR.  Her current project is entitle "Endothelial Glycocalyx Dysfunction in Trauma."

Dr. Marty Vander Noot is a professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. He is the Chief of the UAB Inpatient Wound Care Service.  His areas of interest include international medicine, emergency medicine, wound care, and hyperbaric oxygen. His current research is "Enhancing Wound Management: A Quality Improvement Project Examining the Implementation of an Inpatient Wound Care Team."

Dr. Jon Winkler is an assistant professor in the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. His areas of interest include trauma, emergency general surgery, surgical critical care, laparoscopy, and minimally invasive surgery.  Dr. Winkler served in the Air Force with the Special Operations Surgical Teams. His last 3 years in the Air Force were spent serving as the detachment commander of the first Special Operations Surgical Team stationed at the University of Alabama, Birmingham where he was appointed as a Clinical Assistant Professor in Trauma and Critical Care. After his time at UAB, Dr. Winkler took a position as a general surgeon in West Virginia for the next six years. He then made the decision to return to Alabama and was recruited back to the University of Alabama, Birmingham in the Division of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery. Dr. Winkler has interests in clinical management of surgical patients, military and tactical surgical care, and trauma critical care.

• Evaluation of protocol for platelet transfusion based on platelet mapping
• Evaluation of the management strategies for adhesive small bowel obstruction
• Evaluation of the resuscitative measures in the management of burn patients