David Mayer Gaba MD

David M. Gaba, MD is the Associate Dean for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning and Director of the Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning (CISL) at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a Professor (with tenure) of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine and Founder and Co-Director of the Simulation Center at Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System where he is also a Staff Physician.

For over 30 years, Dr. Gaba and his laboratory have worked extensively on human performance and patient safety issues and in applying organizational safety theory to healthcare. In the medical community, Dr. Gaba is perhaps best known as the inventor of the modern full-body patient simulator and is an expert in mannequin-based simulation for human patients in the dynamic clinical settings of anesthesia and critical care.

A simulation educator, Dr. Gaba teaches simulation instructor courses as well as Maintenance of Certification in Anesthesiology courses for experienced anesthesiologists and ACRM courses for anesthesiology residents. Other endeavors include simulation research projects, mentoring junior colleagues from all disciplines and domains in pursuit of their simulation-based research as well as scholarly writing about patient safety and simulation.