Yale

Dr. Barksdale, an All-American fencer and captain for the Bulldogs, earned an NCAA post-graduate scholarship to medical school upon graduating from Yale with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1980. He went on to get his M.D. from Harvard in 1984.
 
Dr. Barksdale is considered one of the country's leading experts in the field of pediatric surgery. His areas of expertise include short bowel syndrome, in utero malformations and the immunobiology of neuroblastoma.  He is the division chief of Pediatric Surgery, vice chairman of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and division chief of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. He is Surgeon-in-Chief at UH Rainbow, holds the Robert J. Izant, Jr., MD, Endowed Chair in Pediatric Surgery, and is a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He also recently served as president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association.
 
Dr. Barksdale did his general surgery training at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was Chief of West Surgery Service. After a fellowship in pediatric surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, he spent 13 years as a professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an attending pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. In 2007 he became the first surgeon in western Pennsylvania to perform in utero surgery on a fetus.
 
Dr. Barksdale has previously been recognized with the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor's Distinguished Public Service Award, the Health Cancer Hero Award, the Michael E. Miller Young Investigator Award and the Robert Wood Johnson Career Development Award. He was named by Black Enterprise as one of "America's Leading Doctors" in 2008.
 
Dr. Barksdale has served as co-chair of Project Focus, a youth violence prevention program. He also launched a hospital-based violence intervention program for teens called the Antifragility Initiative.