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Carla Pugh, MD, PhD is the Thomas Krummel Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement (T.E.C.I.) Center. Her clinical area of expertise is Acute Care Surgery and her research involves the use of simulation, advanced engineering technologies, and artificial intelligence to develop new approaches for assessing and defining mastery in clinical procedural skills. Dr. Pugh is considered to be a leading, international expert on the use of sensors and motion tracking technologies for performance measurement.
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 attended Stanford University to obtain her PhD in Education. She has over 150 peer reviewed publications, is an Associate Editor for Annals of Surgery and has had over 20 Million dollars in research funding throughout her career.
Dr. Pugh holds multiple 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, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barack Obama at the White House in 2011. In 2014, she was invited to give a TEDMED talk on the potential uses of technology to transform how we measure clinical skills in medicine. In 2018, Dr. Pugh was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2019 she was inducted into the American College of Surgeons Academy of Master Surgeon Educators. In 2020 she became a Councilor and General Surgery Board Director for the American Board of Surgery and in 2021 she was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. Currently she is President of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons (SBAS).
More information about Dr. Pugh and her research can be found here.