Bio
Dr. Knowlton is an Associate Professor of Surgery and an Acute Care Surgeon whose practice encompasses trauma surgery, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. She is an NIH and ARPA-H funded researcher whose focus is on improving access to innovative, high-quality surgical care. She obtained her medical degree at McGill University and completed her general surgery residency at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her desire to understand varied healthcare systems and develop policy solutions led her to obtain an M.P.H. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and complete a research fellowship at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. After training as a Surgical Critical Care fellow at Stanford University Medical Center, she joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Surgery in early 2018. She was promoted to Associate Professor in the University Medical Line in 2023. Her institutional leadership roles include serving as the Unit Based Medical Director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, the Associate Vice Chair of Research for the Stanford Department of Surgery, the SHC Surgical AI Lead for Early Clinical Deterioration, and the Associate Program Director for the Surgical Critical Care fellowship.
Dr. Knowlton is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Dr. Knowlton’s areas of clinical interest include developing safe surgical solutions for anatomic visualization in the operating room, artificial intelligence prediction tools for detection early clinical deterioration of surgery patients, optimizing the management of critically ill patients and reducing venous thromboembolism events.
Her research focuses on improving access to high-quality and high-value surgical care, merging expertise in health economics, and artificial intelligence to implement surgical innovations and health policy interventions. She leads novel work with the Department of Health Care Services focused on improving healthcare access and utilization through emergency Medicaid programs.
Dr. Knowlton’s research lab (https://med.stanford.edu/knowlton-lab.html) is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the National Institute of Health (NIMHD) through R21 and R01 grants, and the California Violence Prevention Center. She has also held funding through PCORI, the Department of Defense, the American College of Surgeons (the 17th C. James Carrico Faculty Research Fellowship), and the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST).
https://surgery.stanford.edu/news2/Knowlton-ARPA-H.html
She is active in national and international professional surgical societies, and recently served as the inaugural Chair of the Associate Member Council of the AAST. Dr. Knowlton has been recognized by the Association of Women Surgeons as both a ‘Shining Star’ and ‘Breaking the Glass Ceiling’ Leadership Scholar. She is also an American College of Surgeons Health Policy Scholar. Most recently, Dr. Knowlton was also selected as the 2023-24 U.S. ambassador for the James IV Surgical Association Traveling Fellowship program, where she will travel internationally to foster clinical and research collaborations.
