It is an incredible honor to serve as president of the SAGES Education and Research Foundation. My first ever SAGES meeting was in 1992 at the outset of the laparoscopic revolution, and it was the most electrifying meeting I have ever attended with new techniques and procedures being developed almost weekly. SAGES has meant so much to me and my career, as I’m sure it has for you, and many of the initiatives our organization has undertaken and the evolution of minimally invasive surgery over the past 25+ years would not have been possible without critical funding from the SAGES Foundation: FLS, FES, FUSE, Safe cholecystectomy, Global surgery, OWLS, and many others.
Our History and Mission
The Foundation was formed in 1999 thanks to the vision and hard work of SAGES leaders including Greg Stiegmann, Ken Forde, Jeff Ponsky, and Barbara Berci and others who saw the need for an organization separate from SAGES in which the strategy was long-term. Years before conflict of interest regulations began to impact industry-surgical society relationships, they recognized the importance of building a corpus of funds, jump started by industry contributions, that would fund projects to support education and research in GI and endoscopic surgery and patient care.
Contact Information
(310) 437-0544 | Fax: (310) 437-0585 | E-mail: [email protected]