William O Richards

Dr. William O. Richards is the Professor and Chair of Surgery at the University Of South Alabama College Of Medicine. He obtained his BS degree in biology in 1975 from Dickinson College and his MD degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1979. From 1983 to 1984 he was chief resident in general surgery at the University of Maryland Hospital, whereafter he became a fellow in portal hypertension and endoscopy at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1987, he completed a research fellowship in gastrointestinal (GI) physiology at VanderbiltUniversity, Nashville, TN, where he served as the Ingram Professor of Surgery at Vanderbilt School of Medicine until 2009. He has served as chairman and secretary for the Southern Medical Association and he is a member of more than 20 national and international scientific societies. Dr. Richards is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an acknowledged expert in the field of gastric bypass surgery and has given numerous invited lectures on laparoendoscopic surgery around the world. His current research interests include the electrophysiology of GI smooth muscle.