Dr. Koniaris is a surgeon and scientist with a strong, long-standing interest and expertise in surgery including sarcoma, liver, GI tract, translational, as well as research that spans basic and translational science to clinical outcomes and surgical education and mentorship. His research training and scientific expertise has been focused heavily on basic science of liver and muscle responses in critical illness and cancer. As well, he has an extensive record of clinical surgical scholarship and studies leveraging large datasets to study effects of race and ethnicity and center expertise in clinical outcomes. In his studies of academic productivity, he has probed the relationships among gender and career outcomes, funding mechanisms as drivers of surgeon-scientist success, and the role of PhD faculty in the success of academic departments of surgery. His scholarship in the early 2000s also shaped policy and the legal framework surrounding lethal injection for execution. Dr. Koniaris has also published on medical and professional ethics.

Dr. Koniaris has published 262 papers with over 13,000 citations and an h-index of 57.

His current grant funding includes:

NIGMS R01 GM137656: The Musculoskeletal Cost of Organ Repair (MPI with Teresa Zimmers, PhD)

Following surgery or traumatic injury, the body requires a large quantity of amino acids and fats to regenerate and heal damaged tissues and organs. This process, however, generally occurs during a time of impaired eating and works through a mechanism whereby the body massively catabolizes tissues including muscle and fat; this application seeks to understand the molecular and cellular processes involved in organ cross-talk after injury, focusing on the mediators IL-6, YAP and TAZ in the inter-organ communication of tissues, organs, and muscle in the context of severe injury.

NCI P01 CA236778-03  Core B – Human Biospecimen and Advanced Sequencing Core within the Program Project: The Role of the Macroenvironment in Pancreatic Cancer Cachexia 

This program will define molecular and cellular interactions between immune system modulators and different cell and tissue types in the development and progression of pancreatic cancer and in the accompanying systemic wasting syndrome known as cachexia. This Core resource will collect and provide human tissue samples from and disease-related data from consenting patients with pancreatic cancer and perform isolation of cells and nuclei from tumor, blood, adipose and muscle in order to carry out advanced gene expression analysis from individual cells. The functions of this Core will benefit all projects.