Aurora D. Pryor, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS

Aurora D. Pryor, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS, is surgeon-in-chief of Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital; chair of the department of surgery at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University; and president of Brown Surgical Associates.

Dr. Pryor is an internationally recognized leader in minimally invasive and bariatric surgery. She was formerly surgeon-in-chief at Long Island Jewish Hospital and system director for Bariatric Surgery at Northwell Health. She was also a professor of surgery at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.  

A native of Michigan, Dr. Pryor earned a bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering and electrical engineering from Duke University and a medical degree from the Duke University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in general surgery at Duke, followed by a fellowship in minimally invasive surgery. She was on the faculty and held multiple leadership roles at Duke from 2003 to 2011. Dr. Pryor then joined Stony Brook University, where she served as vice chair of surgery; chief of bariatric, foregut and advanced GI surgery; and director of the Bariatric and Metabolic Weight Loss Center. She was also director of the Advanced GI/MIS/Bariatric/Foregut Fellowship at Stony Brook.

Dr. Pryor’s work has appeared in more than 250 publications, and she has co-edited six textbooks. Her current research focuses on advancing laparoscopic bariatric and GI surgery techniques and outcomes, and on new technology in surgery. She holds patents for several surgical technologies, including the Transenterix SPIDER single port system. Her clinical care focuses on individualized treatment options of patients with gastroesophageal diseases, obesity, and hernia.

A past president of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) and current president of SAGES Ingenuity, Dr. Pryor serves on the American Board of Surgery as a councilor and was the vice chair of the General Surgery Board. She serves on the editorial boards of Annals of Surgery and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. In 2021, she founded the Women’s Leadership in Surgery Society, for which she was the inaugural president.