Meet the Authors
Dr. Leigh Neumayer, Surgeon
Leigh Neumayer, MD, MS graduated with honors from Colorado State University with a degree in engineering. She completed medical school at Baylor College of Medicine and trained in General Surgery at University of California San Francisco and University of Arizona in Tucson. She obtained a masters degree in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis from the University of Michigan. After serving two years on the faculty at the University of Arizona, she joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 1992.
Currently Professor of Surgery, Dr. Neumayer is Co-Director of the Integrated Breast Program at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital. This is a multidisciplinary team treating breast cancer. She has extensive experience in total skin sparing (nipple sparing mastectomy), sentinel lymph node biopsy and has long been a proponent of immediate breast reconstruction. She participates in many breast cancer research projects from collaborations with basic scientist researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, to national multicenter clinical trials.
Dr. Neumayer is a formally trained clinical trialist. She was the principal investigator for the large VA multicenter inguinal hernia trial and has collaborated on several other VA randomized trials. She has served as a consultant for many local clinical trials. She served as the program director for the University of Utah's Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) grant, an NIH funded K12 award. She is currently a co-investigator on several other NIH funded studies.
She is a member of the Imaging, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics Program and the Vice-Chair of the Clinical Cancer Investigations committee. She holds a Jon and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professorship in Cancer Research. Nationally, she is a past president of the Association of Women Surgeons, Association of VA Surgeons, and Association for Surgical Education. She is a Director of the American Board of Surgery, served as a governor of the American College of Surgeons and has recently been elected a Regent of the American College of Surgeons.
Dr. Neumayer has published over 100 articles, many book chapters and editorials. Her most recent accomplishment is the publication of the book Meet Virginia: Biography of a Breast.
back to top
Dr. Jay Agarwal, Plastic Surgeon
Dr. Jay Agarwal is an Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery at the University of Utah. He was born and raised in Michigan where he attended college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He graduated from medical school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and then went on to complete residency training in Plastic Surgery at The University of Chicago. Dr. Agarwal's training gave him a solid foundation in general reconstructive plastic surgery, aesthetic surgery, and pediatric plastic surgery. After six years in Chicago, he went on to further specialize in Hand Surgery and Microvascular Surgery at the Buncke Clinic in San Francisco.
Dr. Agarwal is board certified in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Hand Surgery. He is an active member of the Plastic Surgery Research Council, American Society for Surgery of the Hand, American Society of Plastic Surgeons and American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery. He is dedicated to resident and medical student education through his clinical, teaching, and research activities.
Dr. Agarwal specializes in all aspects of breast surgery, including aesthetic breast augmentation, breast lifts, and breast reconstruction after cancer or deformities. He emphasizes using perforator flaps, a cutting edge technique that uses the patient's own tissues to reconstruct the breast including DIEP, SIEA, TUG, and SGAP. His clinical interests include aesthetic plastic surgery, hand surgery and reconstructive microsurgery. His focus is on reconstruction of traumatic injuries and defects caused by cancer. He performs complex reconstruction after upper and lower extremity trauma and head and neck cancer.
back to top
Anne Vinsel, Photographer
Anne Vinsel is a painter, photographer and sculptor with an MFA from the University of Utah; she also has an MS in psychology from the same institution. She enjoys photographing surgery, collaborating on projects, problem solving, music and dogs, especially deaf dogs. Her day job entails performing internal reviews on 65 residency and fellowship programs, which is how she met the surgeons in this book. She finds shooting surgery interesting because there are many problem situations (too much light, wrong type of light, working around sterile conditions, etc.) that can't be changed and must be worked around, and because shooting surgeons is like shooting hummingbirds--they are never still! She will travel to shoot surgeries.
back to top