Biography

Martin A. Schreiber, M.D., has built his career around service, leadership, and innovation in surgery. He is known internationally as a surgeon, researcher, educator, and military officer whose work has shaped how both military and civilian teams approach emergency care.

He studied chemistry at the University of Chicago before earning his medical degree at Case Western Reserve University. His surgical training took him through Madigan Army Medical Center and the University of Washington, where he served as Chief Resident and completed a fellowship in trauma and surgical critical care. Even early on, he showed a focus on improving the care of patients in the most demanding situations.

Much of his professional life has balanced military service with academic medicine. As a Colonel in the Medical Corps of the United States Army Reserve, he deployed three times, to Iraq in 2005 and to Afghanistan in 2010 and 2014. In Iraq he served as Chief of Surgery for the 228th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit. In Afghanistan he served as a surgeon with the 932nd Forward Surgical Team in Shank and as Director of the Joint Theater Trauma System for U.S. Central Command, where he worked to improve and coordinate trauma care across combat zones. These assignments placed him where skill and fast decisions made the difference between life and death, and they gave him the experience to build trauma systems that continue to save lives.

Dr. Schreiber built a distinguished academic career alongside his clinical and military work. He taught at Baylor College of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University before joining Oregon Health & Science University, where he served as Professor of Surgery from 2008 to 2025 and held additional appointments in physiology and pharmacology. He founded the Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and Acute Care Surgery and led the Donald D. Trunkey Center for Civilian and Combat Casualty Care, advancing trauma science and preparing both military and civilian surgeons. Teaching has remained a constant thread in his work, whether in classrooms, operating rooms, or national training programs.

Research has been central to his impact. He has studied how to treat traumatic brain injury before patients reach the hospital, new ways to resuscitate those in hemorrhagic shock, and better methods of stopping severe bleeding. He has also led the development of blood products designed for use when standard supplies are not available. His research has been supported by the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and private industry, and he has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and textbooks.

Dr. Schreiber has also been active in leadership roles across national organizations. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a past Chair of the Trauma Center Association of America, and he has led professional surgical societies at the state and regional level. He serves as National Director of the Definitive Surgical Trauma Care Course, helping set training standards for surgeons across the world.

His work has been recognized with major awards, including the John P. Pryor Distinguished Service Award in Military Casualty Care from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. He was recently named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand, showing how far his impact has spread around the world. He continues to lecture widely in the United States and abroad, sharing both scientific insights and the lessons of his military service.

Today, Dr. Schreiber serves full time as Director of Surgical Research in the Department of Surgery at Madigan Army Medical Center, the institution where he began his surgical training. He remains an Adjunct Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University and a Colonel in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve. Across every role, his work has carried the same goal: to give trauma patients, whether warfighters or civilians, the best possible chance of survival.