Juan Carlos Puyana, MD is Associate Professor of Surgery, Critical Care Medicine and Clinical Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the Past-President of the Pan-American Trauma Society, and Director of Global Health for the Dept. of Surgery at Pitt.
He was originally born in Colombia where he finished Medical School before completing his residency training at McGill in Montreal and his Trauma Fellowship at Yale. He is well aware of the many challenges facing the health system in Colombia and his experience places him in a unique and advantageous position to identify major gaps in the areas of clinical medical research, education and provision. As a clinician, Dr. Puyana is an active trauma and Critical Care Surgeon working at the Largest Level One Trauma center and Acute Care Center in Pennsylvania. He participates in, Fellowship, Resident and Student mentoring. He is a vicechairman for Pennsylvania at the Committee on Trauma of the American College of Surgeons.
Over the past 10 years he has participated in several International Research and Training Collaborations in Latin America. He is currently the PI of the Fogarty International Center (FIC) D43 Informatics Training for Global Health (ITGH) in Colombia (1D43TW008443-01), the PI/PD of an R21 on Capacity Building for Decompressive Craniotomy in Colombia (1R21TW009332-01A1) and was former PD/PI of a D43 on International Collaborative Trauma and Injury Research Training Grant (D43 TW 007560 01) also in Colombia. Dr. Puyana is involved in promoting research, educational opportunities, and clinical collaboration in Latin America. Dr. Puyana has been the mentor of 14 Colombians that have returned to their country to participate in many areas of clinical research.