Office of Global Health: Staff

Ziad C. Sifri, MD, FACS, is the Director of OGH, is a Professor of Surgery at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, NJ and has been a Trauma and Critical Care Attending at University Hospital since 2003. Dr. Sifri attended Medical School at McGill University in Montreal (Class of ’95). He completed his General Surgery Residency at John Hopkins University. He then finished a two year Trauma/ Critical Care and Research fellowship at Rutgers University, NJ Trauma Center. 

Dr. Sifri is the President of International Surgical Health Initiative (ISHI), a humanitarian non-profit organization (501c3) he cofounded in 2009.  ISHI provides free surgical care to underserved communities internationally through volunteer services. ISHI has completed 17 surgical missions and performed more than 1200 free surgeries in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Peru, Guatemala and the Philippines. Dr. Sifri currently leads 2-3 surgical missions per year and has personally led twelve missions, including an emergency mission to Haiti after the 2010 Earthquake. 

Dr. Sifri has been the Benjamin Rush Global Surgery fellowship director since 2015. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Global Surgery at NJMS. Dr. Sifri is the director of Global Surgery electives for 4th year medical students, director of the Global Health/Global Surgery non–credit elective and the faculty mentor for the ISHI Student Club since 2013. He is the recipient of Johns Hopkins Chief Resident Award, the NJMS Excellence in Teaching Award and a seven-time recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching Award.

Dr. Sifri has authored 51 peer reviewed publications, 60 published abstracts and has co-authored 3 book chapters in Acute Care Surgery. He is the recipient of an Internationalizing the Curriculum grant from the Rutgers Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs.

Harsh Sule, MD, MPP, is the Associate Director of OGH and is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, NJ. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He currently serves as Residency Program Director for Emergency Medicine at Rutgers NJMS. 

Dr.Sule completed his undergraduate studies in Political Science and Biological Sciences at Northwestern University (1995), medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1999), residency in Emergency Medicine (including serving as Chief Resident) at Cook County Hospital (2003). He also has a Master in Public Policy from Princeton University (2012).  

Dr. Sule has global health experience related to administrative and service activities. He lived and worked in Azerbaijan where he worked with International Medical Corps on an emergency medicine development project and also served briefly as the organization’s Country Director. Prior to coming to Rutgers NJMS, he worked at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA, where he was Co-Chair of the University’s Global Health Initiatives Committee. At Jefferson he also co-founded/directed a fellowship in Global Health for Emergency Physicians and served as a faculty mentor for Refugee Health Partners. His international work has spanned several countries including Azerbaijan, China, Japan and Sierra Leone. 

Dr. Sule was honored to receive Golden Apple Teaching Awards from the Rutgers NJMS Classes of 2016 and 2017, the Golden Apple Emergency Medicine Teaching Award from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and the Jefferson Medical College Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education. He has lectured regionally, nationally and internationally on emergency medicine and global health topics, with publications related to these topics too, and has been active in national/international organizations related to Global Health. He is the recipient of an Internationalizing the Curriculum grant from the Rutgers Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs.