GHREST Executive Team and Mentors

Karl Y. Bilimoria, MD, MS, (PI, director of GHREST for health services and outcomes research) is an internationally recognized leader in oncology, quality improvement, and health services research. He is the Jay Grosfeld Professor of Surgery with tenure and the chair of the Department of Surgery. He is also vice president for surgical quality for the Indiana University Health system. Bilimoria was the contact PI for two training grants when at Northwestern: an NCI T32 and an NCI R38, both of which he initiated and led. Bilimoria is the founding director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center (SOQIC), a center of 55 faculty and staff focused on national, regional, and local quality improvement research and practical initiatives, and he recently relocated his research and fellowship training programs to Indiana University School of Medicine, including the three primary mentors from the prior R38 and several staff who support the trainees, plus three other faculty.  He is the director of the Iliana Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative (ISQIC), PI of the 151-hospital national FIRST Trial, and PI of the national 215-hospital SECOND Trial. He is a faculty scholar with the ACS Cancer Programs, a recent member of the Society of Surgical Oncology Executive Committee, and he recently finished his term on the AJCC executive committee. He has published more than 450 scientific articles (h-index=79), including multiple recent first and senior-author studies in JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, JNCI, JCO, and the Annals of Surgical Oncology. Bilimoria’s research funding over the past decade totals more than $37 million from the NIH, AHRQ, the Health Care Service Corporation, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), the American Cancer Society, and other funders. Bilimoria is a recent President of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS), an organization focused on developing and inspiring young academic surgeon-scientists in basic and translational research and health services and outcomes research. He has lectured and led the following long-standing national workshops: “Fundamentals of Surgical Research” and “Early Career Development Course.” Bilimoria has mentored 44 surgical research trainees from multiple disciplines (oncology, surgery, urology, vascular, plastics) from residency programs all over the country.  All of his trainees have taken academic positions. Bilimoria is currently a mentor for three surgical faculty with K-awards (Stey, Odell and Yang), and he has been a thesis advisor for PhD candidates and a K-award mentor for PhD-level junior faculty. He has been on the executive committee of NRSA T32 (T32HS000078) and AHRQ K12 (K12HS026385) training awards. Bilimoria currently has grants of > $400,000 per year in direct costs extending to at least 2027.

Troy Markel, MD, (contact PI, chair of GHREST executive committee and director of GHREST for basic and translational science research) is an associate professor with tenure in the Departments of Surgery and Anatomy, Cellular Biology and Physiology at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at Purdue University. He will be promoted to professor in July of 2024. He has been the director of resident research at IU School of Medicine for the last five years. In this role, he has implemented a dedicated two-year course curriculum for research trainees and has developed a formal standard for mentor and mentee evaluations. He serves as the vice chair for research within the Department of Surgery and has led efforts to acquire a 6,000 square foot laboratory facility from the School of Medicine to house all of the Department of Surgery’s basic and translational investigators. This combined departmental lab will promote collaboration, the use of shared resources, and the improved education of trainees. Markel has published over 240 scientific manuscripts/abstracts/and book chapters in journals such as the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, Circulation, the American Journal of Physiology, and JAMA Surgery (h-index=36).

He is a former F32, LRP, and K08 awardee and currently has an R01 focusing on stem cell therapy for the treatment of necrotizing enterocolitis. He has been funded by the NIH since 2018 and has received other prestigious grants through the Thrasher and Gerber Foundations as well as the American College of Surgeons. He has played cooperative roles on grants through the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the NEC Society.  His research funding over the past decade totals $5 million and he will receive funding over $450,000/year through 2028. Markel’s education experience started in 2011, first with teaching medical students and surgical residents. He currently mentors five postdoctoral fellows (three basic science, two health services, and outcomes research). Over the past decade, he has mentored twelve medical students and eighteen post-doctoral fellows and has trained thirteen pediatric surgery fellows. He serves as a primary faculty member for an Indiana University T32 entitled “IU Training Program in Molecular Physiology and Clinical Mechanisms of Lung Disease” with PI's Machado, Tepper, and Forno. At the national level, he was the publications committee chair of the Association of Academic Surgery in 2017 and has served on various committees of The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, and the Society of University Surgeons. He sits on the scientific advisory board for the NEC Society, the world’s largest active nonprofit organization designed to unite stakeholders in necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) research to “build a world without NEC.” He serves as an associate editor for Pediatric Surgery International and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology and was the former associate editor of the Journal of Surgical Research. He serves on the NIH DDK-F study section and has served on the March of Dimes Discovery Award study section.

Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH, (PI, Director of GHREST education, mentorship, and evaluation) is a tenured professor in the Department of Surgery and Department of Medicine and is also jointly appointed in the Fairbanks School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology and the president and CEO of the Regenstrief Institute, a non-profit research institute. She is an experienced epidemiologist and health services researcher with broad-reaching expertise in surveillance data, electronic health records, and health system data for research purposes, including designing and conducting cohort and pragmatic clinical trials and national and regional policy evaluations. As PI of several R01 and U01 grants, she has conducted multi-level analyses to examine social determinants of health among patients with end-stage organ failure and conducted community-engaged, effectiveness-implementation pragmatic interventions (including mHealth tools) to address health disparities and translate evidence into practice to impact communities and health systems. Patzer is nationally active in policy change, quality metrics, and data related to improving transplant equity. As the HSR center director, she works directly with or maintains numerous EHR datasets (e.g., the Indiana Network for Patient Care database, which covers 96% of health systems in Indiana, and the Early Steps to Transplant Access Registry).

Patzer formerly served as the co-director of the Georgia CTSA TL1 training program from 2017-2023 when she was at the Emory University School of Medicine and has served as the course co-director for two core required courses in the MSCR and CPTR program at Emory, including MSCR 595 (Health Services Research) and MSCR 536 (Analysis and Presentation of Clinical Research Data). In addition to her doctoral training in epidemiology, she received a TL1 grant (2008) and a KL2 training grant. Patzer has extensive health services research experience and three active R01 grants. She has previously served as site PI of the OneFlorida+ PCORNet study to advance pragmatic, patient-centered studies across the institution, MPI of the large ~$20 million metro-Atlanta RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) meta-cohort where she oversaw data management of five health systems. She recently completed her service as a standing study section member of the Organization and Delivery of Health Services (ODHS) study section and is the immediate past chair of the HRSA-funded United Network for Organ Sharing Data Advisory Committee. She is an active board member of the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE). She is the lifetime director and co-founder of the community-based organization the Southeastern Kidney Transplant Coalition, a community-academic collaborative whose mission is to eliminate health inequities in access to kidney transplantation. Patzer has worked with more than 30 trainees, including one current postdoctoral trainee and six past postdoctoral trainees. She has served as a mentor on four other training grants, including T32HL130025, T32AI070081, TL1TR002382, and 5R25DK101390. Patzer has received several mentoring awards, including the Emory School of Medicine postdoctoral Fellow 1 in 100 Mentoring Award in 2016 and the Medical Student Research Mentor Award in 2019. She has published >200 (h-index=41) peer-reviewed manuscripts and has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2012.