George K. Gittes

George K. Gittes, MD serves as the Chief of Pediatric Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief Emeritus at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. In addition, he was appointed Director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation Institute for Pediatric Research and Co-Scientific director at UPMC Children’s Hospital in 2018. Prior to UPMC, Dr. Gittes served as the Director of Surgical Research at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City and held the Thomas M. Holder and Keith W. Ashcraft Chair in Pediatric Surgical Research. During his time in Kansas City, he also was elected to the position of President of the Society of University of Surgeons.

Achievements

• He is an active member of numerous professional and scientific society memberships, including the American Society of Clinical Investigators, the American Surgical Association, the American Diabetes Association and the Association of American Physicians.
• His research has been published in several peer-reviewed scientific publications, and he is the recipient of several research grants, including a $2.59 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to assist his ongoing preclinical research for important proof-of-principle non-human primate studies of his diabetes gene therapy.