Commission Membership

Carla Pugh, MD, PhD
Professor of Surgery, Director, Tech. Enabled Clinical Improvement Center

Bio

Carla Pugh is Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement (T.E.C.I.) Center. Her clinical area of expertise is Acute Care Surgery. Dr. Pugh obtained her undergraduate degree at U.C. Berkeley in Neurobiology and her medical degree at Howard University School of Medicine. Upon completion of her surgical training at Howard University Hospital, she went to Stanford University and obtained a PhD in Education. She is the first surgeon in the United States to obtain a PhD in Education.

Her research involves the use of simulation and advanced engineering technologies to develop new approaches for assessing and defining mastery in clinical procedural skills. Dr. Pugh holds three patents on the use of sensor and data acquisition technology to measure and characterize hands-on clinical skills. Currently, over two hundred medical and nursing schools are using one of her sensor enabled training tools for their students and trainees. Her work has received numerous awards from medical and engineering organizations. In 2011 Dr. Pugh received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barak Obama at the White House. In 2017 she was noted to be one of only 10 African-American Female surgeons with NIH grant funding. Currently, Dr. Pugh is President-Elect of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons and Co-Chair for Stanford University's Race in STEM Cluster Hire.