Maria Iliakova, MD FACS

Dr. Maria Iliakova is a bariatric & general surgeon at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York City. She is fellowship-trained in Bariatric & Minimally Invasive Surgery. Dr. Iliakova is passionate about leveraging technology to improve patient access to surgical care and dveloped BariBuddy, the first AI assistant for bariatric patients. She served as Director of Robotic Surgery at Mercy Iowa City prior to its merger with the University of Iowa. Dr. Iliakova serves as Chair of the ASMBS Insurance Committee and actively contributes to the SAGES SDS Taskforce and Robotics Committee, OMA, AMA, and AWS. A Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, ASMBS, and SAGES, Dr. Iliakova engages in research, presentations, and publications on bariatric and foregut surgery, health insurance, surgical AI, telesurgery, and the business of healthcare. She also holds patent 63/603,410 for an innovative system that stores and sorts surgical tools. To improve patient access to care, Dr. Iliakova co-hosts the CORE Bariatrics podcast: https://corebariatrics.buzzsprout.com/ **CREDENTIALS** Fellowship: Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Hackensack University Medical Center Residency: General Surgery, University of Missouri - Kansas City Internship: General Surgery, Carle Foundation Hospital MD: University of Kansas School of Medicine MBA: NYU, Andre Koo Technology & Entrepreneurship MBA MSc Biochemistry & Bioinformatics, Georgetown University Fulbright Fellowship in genetics & proteomics, Center for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona, Spain BS Biology, BA Chemistry, BA Spanish: University of Missouri - Kansas City