Prior to joining the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Buckland was an assistant professor of emergency medicine and mechanical engineering at Duke University. He also served as Medical Director for the Laboratory for Transformational Administration in the Duke Department of Surgery, where he was responsible for medical oversight, development, and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) for the department. He currently serves on the Artificial Intelligence Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Buckland also served for five years as Deputy Human System Risk Manager for Human Spaceflight in the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In this role, he focused on determining the human system risks of spaceflight and how to mitigate risk using standards, countermeasures, and mission design. At UW—Madison, Dr. Buckland is exploring the development of a space medicine fellowship in emergency medicine.
Dr. Buckland’s research is centered on the implementation of autonomy in safety critical systems. He was interested in how to provide medical care in exploration spaceflight with limited resources and people, but his scope has expanded into the emergency department waiting room, prehospital care, and rural medicine — all places where there are more clinical needs than resources and where automation is already proposed as a way to improve access to and quality of care.