Colonel Benjamin “Kyle” Potter, M.D., FACS currently serves the Norman M. Rich Professor and Chair of the Uniformed Services University - Walter Reed Department of Surgery.  He holds a secondary appointment as a Professor of Rehabilitation at the Uniformed Services University (USU) and is the immediate past Director for Surgery at Walter Reed. COL Potter served as the Orthopaedic Surgery Consultant to the U.S. Army Surgeon General in from March 2019 through September of 2022. He is the current Director of the DoD Osseointegration Program at USU and remains the Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon for the Amputee Program at Walter Reed, and a musculoskeletal oncologist within the Murtha Cancer Center at Walter Reed as well as a consultant for the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute.   

COL Potter deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and again in 2016, serving as the Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon of the Task Force 115 Combat Support Hospital (Role III) at Camp Dwyer, Helmand Province and subsequently with the 936th and 629th Forward Surgical Teams at FOB Fenty, Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province. In 2020, he deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait as the Senior Theater Orthopaedic Surgeon embedded with the 411th Hospital Center. 

 

COL Potter is the 2018 past President of the Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons.  He has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous invited manuscripts and book chapters, and is a recipient or co-recipient of more than 30 grant awards. He co-edited the 4th and 5th editions of the Atlas of Amputations and Limb Deficiencies for the AAOS, and serves as a Deputy Editor for Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma. Finally, he serves on the Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee (SCIMAC) for the Amputee Coalition.  In addition to his military awards, he is 2013 (individual) and 2014 (team) recipient of the Military Health System Research Symposium Award for Excellence, a 2016 recipient of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Senior Achievement Award, and a 2021 recipient of the University of Chicago Medical and Biological Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award.  His research interests include trauma-related amputation techniques and outcomes (including osseointegration and targeted muscle reinnervation), combat-related heterotopic ossification, and predictive modeling of musculoskeletal trauma and oncologic outcomes.   

COL Potter is an honor graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his orthopaedic surgery residency training at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a musculoskeletal oncology fellowship at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine.  Kyle lives in Bethesda, MD, with his wife, Michelle, an emergency medicine physician, and their three children – Hazel, James, and Flora – as well as two nieces and a nephew – Ella, Scarlett, and Easton – for whom they serve as guardians.