Eric DeMaria

Educated at Boston University School of Medicine, DeMaria trained in surgery at Brown University then joined the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 1990. There, he was Director of the VCU Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) Center and established a fellowship training program in MIS / Bariatric Surgery. In 2003, he led the VCU Obesity Surgery Center and became Chair of General Surgery. In 2005, DeMaria went to Duke as Professor / Vice Chair and Chief of MIS/Bariatric Surgery. In 2010, DeMaria became Research Director at Surgical Review Corporation, overseeing the BOLD data collection effort. He practiced MIS/Bariatric Surgery at WakeMed, a teaching affiliate of University of North Carolina, until returning to Virginia in 2013 as Director of Bariatric Surgery at Maryview Medical Center. In 2018, he was appointed Professor and Chair of the General and Bariatric Surgery Division at East Carolina University. DeMaria has served in many roles and leadership positions with the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the largest national professional organization for this specialty in the world. He was President of the ASMBS in 2019 and continues to serve as a member of the Executive Council and has held a number of leadership positions including Program Chair, Clinical Issues Chair, Bariatric Training Co-Chair, and Executive Council Member-at-large. He was re-elected to a 2nd term as a Member-at-large of the Executive Council in 2015 and subsequently elected Secretary-Treasurer of the organization in 2016. He was recently appointed Chair of ASMBS new Committee on Board Certification, charged with working together with the American Board of Surgery to launch the new Focused Practice Designation for surgeons specializing in Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery. DeMaria has previously trained 30 bariatric surgeons as a Bariatric Fellowship Director and now runs the new Fellowship Program at ECU. He has spoken at countless conferences and published 129 articles, 30 book chapters, and 6 books. In 2007, he was invited to write a review of Bariatric Surgery for the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. He developed and validated one of the first mortality risk scores for bariatric surgery (Obesity Surgery Mortality Risk Score). He previously served as Scientific Program Chair for IFSO, and has been guest speaker at the Brazilian Bariatric Society and the Mexican General Surgery Congress. In 2010 he was honored by election to the American Surgical Association.