M. Margaret (Peggy) Knudson, MD, FACS

Dr. Knudson is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), adjunct professor at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland, and inaugural Medical Director of the Military Health Service Strategic Partnership ACS.

After completing surgical residency at the University of Michigan, she moved to Stanford where she served as assistant trauma director. In 1989 she joined the UCSF faculty and was only the second female surgeon at the San Francisco General Hospital Trauma Center following in the path blazed by Muriel Steele, MD.

Dr. Knudson has held leadership positions in several professional organizations, including the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST), Western Trauma Association, and ACS Committee on Trauma (COT). She is a widely published author, is a deputy editor of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, and also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. She also has served as chair of the Research Committee for the National Trauma Institute for 4 years and remains on the Board of Directors for the Center for National Trauma Research. For 15 years, she served as the principal investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded San Francisco Injury Center for Research and Prevention. She currently holds grants from the Department of Defense for the study of post-traumatic pulmonary embolism and, until recently, from the National Institutes of Health investigating the use of anticoagulants in patients with COVID-19.

Dr. Knudson has been on the front lines of treating trauma victims in major disasters, including the 2010 Haitian earthquake and the 2013 crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco. She also was a visiting surgeon at both Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Balad Air Force Hospital in Iraq, treating soldiers injured on the battlefield.

Her major honors include the Mary Edwards Walker Award for inspiring women in surgery from the ACS Women in Surgery Committee. She has given both of the major national trauma orations, which include the Fitts Oration at the AAST annual meeting and the Scudder Oration at the ACS Clinical Congress.