Nicole S. Gibran ’85

Nicole S. Gibran, MD, FACS

David & Nancy Auth – Washington Research Foundation Chair in Restorative Burn Surgery

Director, UW Medicine Regional Burn Center, Harborview Medical Center Professor, UW Medicine Department of Surgery

Adjunct Professor, UW Medicine Department of Medicine (Dermatology)

Nicole S. Gibran, MD, FACS received her bachelor’s degree at Brown University, and her medical degree at Boston University. After a residency in the Boston University Department of Surgery under the mentorship of Dr. Erwin  Hirsch,  she  completed  a clinical fellowship in the UW Burn Center with Drs. David Heimbach and Loren Engrav. An NIH Trauma Research T32 Fellowship in the Skin Biology Laboratory of Dr. Karen Holbrook and research training in the laboratory of Dr. Helene Sage followed. She was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1994 and attends as a burn surgeon at Harborview Medical Center. A Professor in the UW Medicine Department of Surgery, she has been the Director of the UW  Medicine Regional Burn Center and the UW Burn Fellowship since 2002. In this role she has emphasized team building and mentoring residents and junior faculty interested in burns. Clinically she has been most interested in promoting optimal clinical outcomes by introducing metrics into our daily practice.

In addition to fulfilling duties in patient care and teaching, Dr. Gibran has developed the UW Medicine Regional Burn Center Research Laboratory with emphasis on  aberrant healing processes including  hypertrophic  scar  formation  and  chronic  non-healing wounds seen with diabetes mellitus. Her research has been continually funded by NIH since 1997. Currently, she studies genetic and epigenetic pathophysiologic causes of aberrant responses to injury. In 2012, she also assumed leadership of the North West Regional Burn Model System, funded by the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. She has over 150 publications in the area of wound repair, response to injury, and burns. She has served on the Surgery Anesthesia and Trauma IRB study section in the NIH Center for Scientific Review since 2001 and was Chair from 2005 – 2007. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Burn Care and Research and Surgery and has contributed to the ACS SESAP 12, 13, and 15 program.

Dr. Gibran has been a member of the American Burn Association since 1991 serving on the Research, Program, Ethics committees and the Committee on the Organization and Delivery of Burn Care. While Chair of the CODBC, her committee guided the ABA organizational policy on disaster planning for burn mass casualties. She  has  been actively involved in establishing Burn Surgery Fellowship Guidelines. She served as President for 2011-12 during which time she emphasized the need for the burn community to embrace outcomes as part of the quest for quality. Currently she serves on the ABA Board of Trustees and is Chair  of  the  Verification  Committee. Her  most recent goal has been to establish a national ABA Burn Quality Improvement Program. She also represents the ABA on the ACS Committee on Trauma and the ACS Board of Governors. She represents North America for the International Society of Burn Injuries.

Dr. Gibran gains most of her creativity and energy from keeping up with her husband Dr. Frank Isik and her two sons, Alexander and Oliver; from  these  individuals  she  has learned her most valuable life lessons.