PGY-4 Resident · Department of Surgery · University of Texas Medical Branch · Galveston
Dr. Isabella Faria is a general surgery resident at the University of Texas Medical Branch and a former Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transplant Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She also served as a Research Associate at the Harvard Program in Global Surgery and Social Change and as a Research Scholar with the Harvard Health Systems Innovation Lab, where she contributed to international initiatives spanning transplant equity, surgical innovation, and global health systems strengthening.
Her research focuses on transplant surgery outcomes, health disparities, and gender equity. She has authored over 35 peer-reviewed publications and led multi-institutional collaborations on surgical workforce representation, access to liver transplantation, and research authorship inequities. Her recent work employs network analysis to examine collaborative dynamics in global transplant research. She is an Academic Editor for PLOS Global Public Health and served in leadership roles, including Co-Chair of the Gender Equity Initiative in Global Surgery (GEIGS) and Chair of the Associate Committee for the Association for Academic Global Surgery (AAGS).
Dr. Faria’s global surgery contributions include national studies on pediatric trauma and blood availability in low-and-middle-income countries, the development of low-cost surgical simulation tools, and the organization of a digital health hackathon for 700+ attendees across 37 countries. She has been recognized with the AASLD Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao Emerging Liver Scholar Award and is committed to building equitable, systems-level models of transplant and surgical care for marginalized populations. She aspires to a career as an academic transplant surgeon at the intersection of clinical excellence, health equity, and innovation.