Nationally renowned pediatric surgeon Dr. Peter C.W. Kim named to lead pediatric surgery at Golisano Children's Hospital of Buffalo and UB

Released: Friday, September 11, 2026 2:03 PM

Nationally renowned pediatric surgeon Dr. Peter C.W. Kim named to lead pediatric surgery at Golisano Children's Hospital of Buffalo and UB

Kaleida Health and Golisano Children's Hospital of Buffalo (GCH Buffalo) are pleased to announce, in collaboration with UBMD Surgery, the appointment of Peter C. W. Kim, MD, CM, PhD, FACS, FRCSC, FAAP, as the John E. Fisher chair in pediatric surgery, surgeon-in-chief of Golisano Children's Hospital of Buffalo and chief of pediatric surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, effective August 1, 2026.

Dr. Kim currently serves as vice chair for research and innovation and professor of surgery and pediatrics at the Jacobs School. He joined the Department of Surgery at GCH Buffalo in April 2024 as a pediatric neonatal, general and thoracic surgeon, with the goal of building a first-tier, data science-driven research and innovation program.

A tenured professor of surgery and internationally recognized pediatric surgeon-scientist, Dr. Kim has spent three decades translating engineering and computational innovation into the operating room, with a body of work distinguished by a series of clinical and scientific firsts.

His team was the first in the world to demonstrate a complex autonomous robotic surgical task in soft tissue. The work, published in Science Translational Medicine, established a scientific foundation for autonomous surgical robotics. NASA recognized the team's contribution in 2017 as one of the top three key innovations for space travel beyond low Earth orbit.

Dr. Kim also led the first use of incisionless, noninvasive, MR-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to treat osteoid osteoma in children, offering a radiation-free, nonsurgical alternative for pediatric bone tumors. He was the founding principal investigator of one of five FDA-funded, pediatric medical device consortia in the United States. The program guided more than 100 startup companies through the device development pathway and helped raise more than $150 million in follow-on funding.

In 2008, while at the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada (SickKids), Dr. Kim established the Fetal Alert Network (FAN), a provincial government-funded, population-based antenatal surveillance and referral network serving Ontario, a province of 17 million residents and approximately 170,000 pregnancies annually.

Dr. Kim's scholarly record includes more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and sustained funding from the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, along with numerous issued and licensed patents. He has co-founded two medtech startups, eKare Inc. in 2016 and Activ Surgical Inc. in 2017, which together have raised more than $100 million in venture financing. Dr. Kim led Activ Surgical as chief medical and scientific officer and served as a director on its board.

Activ Surgical's FDA-cleared, CE-marked surgical imaging platform has since been used in the care of more than 5,000 patients.

As a builder of academic innovation ecosystems, Dr. Kim also founded and led two research incubators: the Centre for Image Guided Innovation and Therapeutic Intervention (CIGITI) at SickKids and the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C.

The Sheikh Zayed Institute is a translational institute supported by $150 million in philanthropy that produced 18 startup companies, more than 50 patents and 80 to 100 publications annually. From 2011 to 2018, Dr. Kim also served as Vice President and Associate Surgeon-in-Chief in the Department of Surgery at Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Kim holds an MD, CM from McGill University and a PhD in immunology from the University of Toronto. He completed his surgical residency and pediatric surgery fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Since arriving in Buffalo, Dr. Kim has focused his work on artificial intelligence in surgery, founding the Data Augmented Research Technology in Surgery (DARTS) laboratory in collaboration with the University at Buffalo's AI Institute and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His team is developing AI-driven tools for surgical vision, decision support and human-machine collaboration.

As surgeon-in-chief and John E. Fisher chair in pediatric surgery at GCH Buffalo, Dr. Kim's mission is to deliver world-class, multidisciplinary pediatric surgical care across the full spectrum of complexity; develop the next generation of pediatric surgical leaders through training and mentorship; advance the science of pediatric surgery through research and innovation; and ensure equitable access to life-changing surgical care for every child in the region, regardless of background or circumstance.

In partnership with leadership at GCH Buffalo, his goal is to build an internationally recognized, regionally indispensable and academically rigorous Department of Surgery where every surgeon, trainee and staff member is united by a shared vision, a culture of excellence and an unwavering commitment to the children and families of Western New York and beyond.

Dr. Kim has recruited three new pediatric surgeons, including a fetal surgeon, and he will continue to build GCH Buffalo as a premier pediatric surgical institution.