Alik Farber, MD

Biography

Alik Farber, MD, MBA, is interim Chair of the Departments of Surgery and Radiology at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Dr. Farber is also interim Chief of the Department of Surgery at Boston Medical Center, where he is Associate Chief Medical Officer for Surgical Services and Chief of the Division of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery.

After earning his undergraduate degree from Brown University, Dr. Farber received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, a vascular surgery fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and an endovascular surgery fellowship at Southern Illinois School of Medicine. He received an MBA from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Dr. Farber began his career in 1999 as a vascular surgeon in private practice at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In 2005, he was recruited to Boston Medical Center as an attending vascular surgeon and joined the faculty of the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor, rising to full Professor in 2015. Throughout his tenure, Dr. Farber has been involved in diverse academic, clinical operational, and leadership roles.

Dr. Farber’s clinical practice focuses on peripheral artery disease. An internationally recognized authority on limb ischemia, he has been invited to contribute to multidisciplinary consensus statements and has lectured across the world on this topic. Dr. Farber has served as principal investigator (PI) for multiple clinical trials involving wound care, intermittent claudication, and deep-vein arterialization. Most recently he served as co-PI of the landmark Best Endovascular versus Best Surgical Therapy in Patients with Critical Limb Ischemia (BEST-CLI) trial. Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, this international, multicenter, randomized controlled trial compared traditional bypass surgery with endovascular treatment for patients with chronic limb threatening ischemia. More than 1,800 patients at 150 sites across North America, Europe, and New Zealand were enrolled, with results published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2022. Dr. Farber, who chairs the BEST-CLI Publications Committee, continues to be actively involved in trial dataset analysis and research dissemination through the BEST-CLI Collaborative, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

A fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a distinguished fellow of the Society of Vascular Surgery, Dr. Farber frequently serves in leadership roles for professional organizations. Currently, he is Secretary of the Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery and Treasurer of both the New England Society for Vascular Surgery and the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Farber has authored more than 260 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 30 book chapters, and has edited two textbooks. He has given more than 160 presentations in over 20 countries.