Ai-Xuan Holterman, M.D., FACS

Credentials
Founder of IPSAC
Pediatric Surgeon (retired)
Professor Emerita of Surgery 
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

Biography

Dr. Ai-Xuan Holterman is the founder and president of IPSAC.  She was born in Vietnam and left her homeland for the US in 1975. She completed her undergraduate, medical and surgical training in the US at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Dallas, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, and the University of Montreal with board certifications in General Surgery and Pediatric Surgery by the American Board of Surgery. 

The professional vocation is to advance children’s surgical care through clinical excellence, applied research, teaching and mentoring, especially in low resources countries. She is the founder of two 501(c)3 organizations IPSAC-VN (International Pediatric Specialist Alliance for the Children of Vietnam) and Prometheus USA to improve children’s health around the world in low- and middle-income countries LMIC and narrow the gaps in surgical care, surgical education and surgical innovation. Both organizations support pediatric surgical capacity building; discovery, development and deployment of innovative medical education, training, and research. 

She was formerly a practicing surgeon and a surgeon scientist with research interests in pediatric liver disease with funding from the National Institute of Health. She has widely published, she is a member of the American Surgical Association, American Pediatric Surgical Association and the Society of University Surgeons. She has been invited guest lecturers in national and international meetings, particularly on the molecular biology of cholestatic liver, obesity-related liver disease, and pediatric morbid obesity. She is now retired as Professor Emerita of Surgery at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has continued her global surgery activities with IPSAC-VN yearly surgical exchange service trips and with Promotheus USA where she is the sponsor of a clinical trial for Biliary Atresia in Vietnam and Pakistan; and of PASS, a Pediatric Acute Surgical Support course to teach essentials in children emergency surgical care in Vietnam, Bahrain, and Tanzania.