Category: News

Bohdan Pomahac, MD, has been promoted to professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Bohdan Pomahac, MD
Director, Plastic Surgery Transplantation, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Bohdan Pomahac, MD, was born and raised in the Czech Republic where he graduated from Palacky University School of Medicine. He trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in General Surgery and completed a fellowship in the Harvard Plastic Surgery Program.

Dr. Pomahac established the Plastic Surgery Transplantation Program at BWH, one of the world’s leading centers in face and vascularized composite tissue allotransplantation (VCA). As a pioneer in the field of VCA transplantation, he led the teams that performed the second partial face transplant and the first three full face transplant procedures in the United Stated. In 2011, the team performed the first successful bilateral upper extremity transplantation in the Northeast. Under Dr. Pomahac’s leadership, the BWH VCA transplant team has performed a number of additional face and hand transplants, and expanded research protocols to include lower extremity and abdominal wall transplantation.

Dr. Pomahac’s research team is currently working on implementation of immunosuppression minimization strategies in clinical trials, development of technology to extend the viability of tissues and other research topics related to VCA transplantation and plastic surgery. His clinical interests include facial reconstruction, reconstruction of oncologic defects including breast, esthetic surgery and microsurgery.

Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH, has been appointed associate chair of Education in the Department of Surgery. Dr. Smink has oversight and advisory responsibility for the Surgical Education Office and educational activities of the Department of Surgery, including medical student programs, as well as ACGME and non-ACGME resident and fellow programs. He will guide enterprise-wide innovations in surgery education, lead and enable novel research in surgical education and serve as a mentor to the program and clerkship directors.

Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH
Associate Chair of Education, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Program Director, General Surgery Residency, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Douglas S. Smink, MD, MPH, is a minimally invasive general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. His clinical interests include foregut surgery, biliary tract disease and abdominal wall hernias. Dr. Smink received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, completed a General Surgery Residency at BWH and a Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He is the associate chair of education in the Department of Surgery and program director of the General Surgery Residency.

Dr. Smink is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Surgical Education and serves as a member of the editorial board of the Surgical Council on Resident Education (SCORE).

His research focuses on resident and faculty education through simulation and he is co-leader of the Surgical Culture Program at the BWH Center for Surgery and Public Health, where he studies how to teach communication, leadership and decision-making to surgeons and surgical teams.