Dr. Thakkar is system Chief of Endoscopy for Allegheny Health Network, an enterprise encompassing 7 hospital GI labs and 11 surgery centers. He is a Clinical Associate Professor Medicine through Temple University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
His clinical practice and research is focused on advanced therapeutic endoscopy, natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES), and video analytics. He has published and presented extensively in these areas. He is the primary clinical investigator in a project aimed at developing technology to optimize quality of endoscopy. He also leads the Multidisciplinary Pancreas Center at AHN, a program individualizing care for patients with pancreatic cancer.
He has received grants from the Disruptive Health Technology Institute, Department of Defense, and Boston Scientific. He is part of the first investigational team in Pennsylvania to perform the Per-Oral Endoscopic Myotomy (a NOTES procedure). Dr. Thakkar has additionally served as faculty at multiple national and international conferences. He served as Ambassador for the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in the follow up program to Vietnam where he taught hemostasis techniques. He has also served as co-editor for Techniques in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in the series on Simulation and Training in Endoscopy (April & July, 2011). Most recently he was recognized by the National Pancreas Foundation with the Courage for the Cure award for his work in pancreatic disease and by the American College of Gastroenterology with a SCOPY award as part of the team optimizing colorectal cancer screening at AHN.