PHILADELPHIA—Penn Medicine’s L. Scott Levin, MD, FACS, the Paul B. Magnuson Professor of Bone and Joint Surgery, chairman of the department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and a professor of surgery in Plastic Surgery, was elected chair of the board of regents of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) during the College’s virtual Clinical Congress held earlier this month.
A pioneer in Orthoplastic Surgery, Levin heads the Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation (VCA) program at Penn Medicine, directing teams that performed bilateral hand transplant operations in 2011, 2016 and 2019. Levin also leads the pediatric hand transplantation program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and the team who performed the world’s first bilateral hand transplant for a child in 2015.
“Dr. Levin assumes this American College of Surgeons leadership position at a pivotal time as we continue to seek ways to keep surgical care safe and accessible,” said ACS Executive Director, David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS. “As Vice-Chair of the Board of Regents this past year, Dr. Levin was integral to shaping the College’s activities in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. His insight and leadership will be important to ACS in the coming year as Chair of the Board of Regents.”
Founded in 1913, the ACS is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that raises the standards of surgical practice and improves the quality of care for all surgical patients. With more than 82,000 members, the ACS is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. Levin has been a Fellow of the ACS since 1996 and previously held other leadership roles. He most recently served as the Vice-Chair of the Board of Regents.
As Chair of the ACS Board of Regents, Levin will work closely with the ACS Executive Director and chair the Regents’ Finance and Executive Committees. The 24-member Board of Regents is responsible for formulating policy and managing the affairs of the College.
Levin came to Penn Medicine in 2009 from Duke University, where he served as the division chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and established Duke’s Human Tissue Laboratory. He later established the Human Tissue Laboratory at Penn to serve as a teaching tool and a research facility for students, residents, and CME participants. Recognized for his commitment to education, Levin received the Master Clinician/Teacher Award for his accomplishments in both clinical care and education at Duke, as well as Penn’s I.S. Ravdin Master Clinician Award.
Levin has published more than 395 peer-reviewed journal articles, 85 book chapters, and 11 books. In addition, he also actively participates in senior leadership activities for other surgical organizations including the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, the American Board of Plastic Surgery, and the American Council of Academic Plastic Surgeons. Levin also served as the Orthopaedic Trauma Association’s Landstuhl Scholar, performing surgeries on war-injured soldiers in Germany in 2009.
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The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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