The UAB Department of Surgery is pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Lily Gutnik. M.D., and Clinical Instructor Salila Hashmi, M.D., to the Division of Breast and Endocrine Surgery and the Division of Surgical Oncology, respectively.
Gutnik will support the General Surgery Residency Program as an assistant program director, responsible for the Resident Global Surgery Program. She completed her undergraduate degree at New York University and medical degree at the Medical School for International Health—a collaboration between Ben Gurion University in Israel and Columbia University in New York. She also holds a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University.
Gutnik also completed a research fellowship at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Harvard University/Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she gained valuable experience in health services research. Her longstanding research passion has revolved around the impact of breast cancer screening and early detection in low-resource settings.
Gutnik served as a Fulbright and Fogarty Fellow in Lilongwe, Malawi where she established and evaluated the efficacy of Malawi’s first breast cancer screening initiative by activating laywomen to become trained breast health workers. In addition, she serves in an advisory board member for two international NGOs and is a committee member of PreTac—a franchise of Discovering Hands in Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently collaborating on various breast cancer projects and initiatives in Tanzania, Malawi, and Nigeria, and with the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative.
Hashmi is a graduate of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan where she earned her medical degree. She subsequently joined the Emory Transplant Center where she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow studying transplant immunology.
Hashmi then completed a residency in general surgery and a fellowship in surgical critical care at the Emory University, School of Medicine. After graduating from Emory she moved to Canada where she completed a dual certified complex general surgical oncology and hepatopancreatobiliary surgery fellowship at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Hashmi’s areas of interest include peritoneal surface malignancies, peritoneal mesothelioma, diseases of small bowel and appendix, metastatic colorectal cancer, liver, bile duct and pancreas cancer, and chronic pancreatitis.
Fay Fletcher Kerner Endowed Chair Herbert Chen, M.D., FACS, is looking forward to the clinical and academic strides these new faculty will take.
“We are glad to welcome Drs. Gutnik and Hashmi, who bring so much experience and knowledge with them to the department,” said Chen. “I hope they will enjoy the benefits of the intentional culture that we have at UAB Surgery as well as all of the resources this institution has to offer.”