Hasan B. Alam

Alam is an academic trauma surgeon. He is an international leader in bench-to-clinic translational trauma research. In 2017, he was awarded the American Heart Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Trauma Resuscitation Science.

Dr. Alam served as the Norman W. Thompson Professor of Surgery, and the Section Head of General Surgery at Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan from 2012-2020. He now serves as the Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. "It's a bigger stage, more complex healthcare system, located in an iconic city. It puts you on a growth trajectory where you are learning new things and growing constantly. These new challenges keep you engaged and energized”, says Alam. “If a patient enters a facility that has the Northwestern Medicine logo on it, they should rest assured that they will get the right care — no matter which door they enter,” he adds.

He has delivered lectures at national and international forums on topics ranging from combat casualty care to achieving academic success in surgery. In 2010, he was featured on the ABC television series Boston Med. He served as the Chair of the Massachusetts Committee on Trauma from 2009 to 2012. He is the Vice-Chair of the Multi-institutional Trials Committee for the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma. He currently serves on the editorial board of multiple journals including the Annals of Surgery, the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, and the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

Alam has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts with around 11,000 citations, and has the h-index of 57. In 2001, in collaboration with the Office of Naval Research, Alam was the first to successfully test the hemostatic dressing QuickClot® for use on the battlefield. For him, this meant “your buddy has to stop the bleeding, not the medic, not the surgeon”. Within months of testing, QuickClot® was deployed for use by the special operation forces in Afghanistan. His work on QuickClot® has been featured in an interview on the surgery podcast series Behind the Knife.

Alam was born in Quetta, Pakistan. He wanted to be a surgeon from early on in life. After completing medical education at the Aga Khan University Medical College, Pakistan in 1990, he moved to the United States for surgical training.

Dr. Alam is an American Board of Surgery-certified trauma and critical care surgeon. He completed a surgical residency at the Washington Hospital Center/Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., which was known as the murder capital in the early 1990s. While taking care of young trauma patients during residency training, Alam realized his passion for trauma surgery. There he also met his mentor, Peter M. Rhee, who served as a major inspiration. After completing residency training, Alam received post-doctoral research training at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, MD. Prior to moving to the University of Michigan in 2012, Alam served as the Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. There he acted as the Founding Medical Director of Multi-Specialty Intensive Care Unit, and the Director of Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He was also the director of research in the Division of Trauma at MGH. During his time at MGH, he received an Honorary Master’s Degree (Artium Magistrum) from Harvard University.