At age 12, Benjamin Levi, M.D., suffered burns over 12% of his body in a bonfire accident. Injuries to his right leg, the area most affected, required skin grafting surgery.

A few years later, the surgeon who had treated Dr. Levi offered him a summer job helping with burn and trauma research at Loyola University Medical Center. Dr. Levi, a Chicago high school student at the time, quickly discovered a passion that would launch his career.

“It was an opportunity that would have an incredible impact on me,” he said. “I just really love the idea of helping patients and doing research.”

On July 1, Dr. Levi accepted a new opportunity that combines his dual interests: Director of the Charles and Jane Pak Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research at UT Southwestern.

The Pak Center evolved from UTSW’s Division of Mineral Metabolism, which launched in 1972. It was the only one in the country at the time, focused on mineral physiology and diseases. The Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research followed in 1994, staffed by specialists who treat patients for kidney stones, bone diseases, and calcium disorders. In 2004, the Center was renamed the Charles and Jane Pak Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research.

Overseeing the Pak Center, Dr. Levi will continue his clinical work, leadership as a Division Chief, and research on musculoskeletal and skin injury, repair, and regeneration. Treating burn and reconstructive surgery patients – plus learning about Dr. Pak and his journey – heightened Dr. Levi’s interest in performing clinically impactful research.

“We are working to better understand the biological processes that lead to debilitating clinical conditions and to develop new ways to detect and prevent them,” he said.

In 2020, Dr. Levi joined UTSW as Chief of the Division of Burn, Trauma, Acute and Critical Care Surgery, Director of the Center for Organogenesis, Regeneration and Trauma, and Professor of Surgery. He holds secondary appointments as Professor of Plastic Surgery, in the Pak Center, and at Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern. He specializes in acute and reconstructive burn surgery and scar reconstructive surgery.

Dr. Levi earned his medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and completed a general surgery internship and a plastic and reconstructive surgery residency at the University of Michigan. A research fellowship in pediatric regenerative medicine and bone biology at Stanford University followed, along with a clinical fellowship in surgical critical care and burn surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Shriners Children’s Boston.

Dr. Levi said he is grateful for the opportunity to advance the vision of the Pak Center’s early leaders, and he plans to emphasize collaboration across different specialties.

“I want to focus on teamwork,” he said, “because it is what allows innovation to happen and makes it possible to become a center of excellence.”