Bethesda, Maryland — Army Colonel (Dr.) Benjamin “Kyle” Potter, a nationally-renowned musculoskeletal oncologist, was selected to chair the Department of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University’s (USU) Hebert School of Medicine, the U.S. military’s medical school, effective August 2021. Potter succeeds Navy Capt. (Dr.) Eric Elster, who was recently selected as the new Hebert School of Medicine Dean.
Potter currently serves as the director for Surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and professor in the USU Surgery and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation departments. He is the orthopaedic surgery consultant to the U.S. Army Surgeon General, and serves as a musculoskeletal oncology consultant at Walter Reed and the National Institutes of Health. Potter also serves as the chief orthopaedic surgeon for the Amputee Program at Walter Reed.
“Dr. Potter is an exceptional choice for chair of USU’s Department of Surgery. He is a world-class surgeon who has personally cared for thousands of injured service members, including hundreds of combat-injured amputees. He is also a bold innovator and critical thinker with outstanding academic and research credentials, perfectly suited to lead the department into the future,” said Dr. Richard Thomas, president of USU.
Potter is an honor graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, where he was recently named as a Distinguished Alumnus. He completed his musculoskeletal oncology fellowship at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, and had a variety of assignments as an Army orthopaedic surgeon. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and again in 2016, serving as the chief orthopaedic surgeon of the Task Force 115 Combat Support Hospital (Role III) at Camp Dwyer, Helmand Province, and subsequently with the 936th and 629th Forward Surgical Teams at FOB Fenty, Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province. In 2020, he deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, as the senior theater orthopaedic surgeon embedded with the 411th Hospital Center.
Potter is the 2018 past-President of the Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons and currently serves on the Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee for the Amputee Coalition. He is a member/fellow of the American Surgical Association, the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons, the American Orthopaedic Association, the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society, the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, and the Orthopaedic Research Society. His research interests include trauma-related amputation techniques and outcomes (including osseointegration and targeted muscle reinnervation), combat-related heterotopic ossification, and predictive modeling of musculoskeletal trauma and oncologic outcomes. He has authored or co-authored more than 175 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous invited manuscripts and book chapters. Potter co-edited the 4th edition of the Atlas of Amputations and Limb Deficiencies for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and is currently at work on the 5th edition, and serves as a deputy editor for Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research and an associate editor for the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma.
“It is the honor of both my military and medical careers to have been selected as the next Chair of USU-Walter Reed Department of Surgery. I will seek to carry on the venerated legacy established by Dr. [Norman] Rich and substantively advanced by Dean Elster by prioritizing USU undergraduate and graduate education, military-relevant research and surgical training, and readiness advances locally, nationally and globally,” said Potter.
About the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences: The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, founded by an act of Congress in 1972, is the nation’s federal health sciences university and the academic heart of the Military Health System. USU students are primarily active duty uniformed officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service who receive specialized education in tropical and infectious diseases, TBI and PTSD, disaster response and humanitarian assistance, global health, and acute trauma care. USU also has graduate programs in oral biology, biomedical sciences and public health committed to excellence in research. The University’s research program covers a wide range of areas important to both the military and public health. For more information about USU and its programs, visit www.usuhs.edu.
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About the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences: The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, founded by an act of Congress in 1972, is the nation’s federal health sciences university and the academic heart of the Military Health System. USU students are primarily active duty uniformed officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service who receive specialized education in tropical and infectious diseases, TBI and PTSD, disaster response and humanitarian assistance, global health, and acute trauma care. USU also has graduate programs in oral biology, biomedical sciences and public health committed to excellence in research. The University’s research program covers a wide range of areas important to both the military and public health. For more information about USU and its programs, visit www.usuhs.edu.
