Prior academic positions include Professor of Surgery at Yale University and a military appointment as Professor
of Surgery (USUHS) in the Army Medical Corps assigned to General Surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Government positions included Program Manager of Advanced Biomedical Technology at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) for 12 years, and Senior Science Advisor at the US Army Medical Research and Materiel
Command in Ft. Detrick, Maryland
During his 23 years of military surgery he had been an active flight surgeon, an Army astronaut candidate, combat
tours of duty as MASH surgeon for the Grenada Invasion, and a hospital commander during Desert Storm, all the while
continuing clinical surgical practice.
He also holds a PhD(hc) at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary a PhD(hc) at Titu Maiorescu University in
Bucharest Romania and DSc from Pleven University Medical Center, Pleven, Bulgaria
Director of the NASA Commercial Space Center for Medical Informatics Telemedicine, and Advanced Technology
(NASA-CSC-MITAT) at Yale University. Upon completion of military career and government service he had continued
clinical medicine at Yale University and University of Washington. For 5 years he was a member of the Advisory Board of
the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) advising NASA in the use of advanced biometric sensing, haptics
and other life science research for astronauts.
Subsequently he was advisor to the Saudi Arabia Minister of Health and consultant for surgical education at the
King Khalid University Hospital in Riyadh
He has served in the US government on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
Committee on Health, Food and Safety.
Awards include the prestigious Department of Defense Legion of Merit and Department of Defense Exceptional
Service medals as well as awarded the Smithsonian Laureate in Healthcare.
He has been a member of numerous committees of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), currently serving on
the ACS-Accredited Education Institutes (ACS-AEI). He is a Past President of the Society of American Gastrointestinal
Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons (SLS), and the Society of Medical Innovation and
Therapy (SMIT). He was a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) and is currently on the Board of
many surgical societies and on the editorial board of numerous surgical and scientific journals, and active in a number of
surgical and engineering societies.
In pioneering research in telepresence surgery, he was the surgeon on the project that developed the first
surgical robot, which later became the DaVinci Surgical Robot. He also was the founder of the Medicine Meets Virtual
Reality (MMVR) conference and built (with Jaron Lanier), the first VR simulator for surgery (in 1989). Shortly thereafter,
while at DARPA, he funded all robotic surgery research and all VR medical simulation for their first 10 years of their
development.
. Now Dr. Satava has added being continuously active in surgical education and surgical research, with more than
250 publications and book chapters in diverse areas of advanced surgical technology, including Surgery in the Space
Environment, Video and 3-D imaging, Plasma Medicine, Directed Energy Surgery, Telepresence Surgery, Robotic Surgery,
Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Surgery, Virtual Reality Surgical Simulation, Objective Assessment of Surgical
Competence and Training and the Moral and Ethical Impact of Advanced Technologies. Current research is focused on
advanced technologies to formulate the architecture for the next generation of clinical Medicine and Surgery, education
and training.
