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Chairman's Message

A New Surgical Era

The era we find ourselves in, in surgery, is like none before. Surgery is becoming more minimally invasive, image-guided and technologically driven. A modern surgery department must recognize these changes, embrace them, and school its students in these evolving skills. The challenges of changing patterns of learning, of changing funding for research, and changing skill sets for clinical practices make this a time of great opportunity. New paradigms in each of these areas are needed to face the future.

Innovation, Research & Creativity

Our faculty bring creativity, and energy to help shape surgery as it will be practiced and taught tomorrow. We hope that this website will help you to know our Department better. The Department has a long and rich history of clinical excellence, educational innovation, and novel research. How about being co-developers, with engineers from General Motors, of the world’s first successful heart pump–a device which revolutionized the care of the cardiac patient. And how about being a part of the biggest single-campus medical school in the United States?

Welcome.

The Department faculty is a mix of senior surgeons, accomplished, experienced surgeons and young, well-trained surgical specialists eager to contribute their skills to teaching the craft of surgery. Come. Join us. And Welcome.

Chairman David Edelman, M.D.

Interim Chair of Surgery

Dr. Edelman was appointed interim Chairman of the Department of Surgery in March 2025. Dr. Edelman graduated from Wayne State University summa cum laude in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. After graduating from the WSU School of Medicine, he performed his surgical residency at WSU/Detroit Medical Center, where he was named senior surgical resident and chief administrative resident. In 2014 he attended the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston, where he earned a master’s of Science in Health Professions Education degree.