David W. Mercer, MD, FACS

Chairman, UNMC Department of Surgery
Professor

David W. Mercer, MD, is the McLaughlin Professor of Surgery and Chairman, Department of Surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska and an appointed board member to the Nebraska Medicine Board and the Children’s Hospital Board.

Dr. Mercer received his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School and completed a residency in General Surgery at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under Dr Wallace P Ritchie Jr. During that time, he also completed 2 years of research training in gut physiology as the Reichele Surgical Research Laboratory Fellow at Temple University. Following residency, he was recruited to Houston, Texas in 1993 as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. In 1998, he became Chief of Surgery at LBJ General Hospital, held the Jack H. Mayfield Chair, and was Division Chief of General Surgery at UT Houston when he left in July of 2009 to assume the Chair position at UNMC.  In 2014, Dr. Mercer accepted the role of Senior Vice President for Clinical Programs for Nebraska Medicine in addition to his role as Chair and served as SVP until 8/2017.

Dr. Mercer has over 100 publications and was continuously funded by NIH for over 10 years at Houston. He was the Principle Investigator of the NIGMS funded P50 Trauma Research Center and the T32 Training Grants that examined the role of the gut in multiple organ failure. In addition, he was the primary mentor for faculty at UT on K23, K08, K12, and Department of Defense Grants. He has sponsored over 15 postdoctoral fellows and over 15 students.

Among the many professional organizations of which Dr. Mercer is a member are the American College of Surgeons, the Association for Academic Surgery, the Society of University Surgeons, the American Surgical Association and is a Past President of the Society of University Surgeons.  He also served as a Director on the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Family Medicine for 6 years until 2018.