Welcome to IBARS

Since its founding in 1984, The Institute For Basic And Applied Research In Surgery (IBARS) has worked in close cooperation with the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota. 

Founding Members (John S. Najarian, MD; Richard L Varco, MD; Richard l. Simmons, MD; William C. Bernstein,MD) wished to create an environment of intellectual curiosity within the Surgical Resident Training Program that offered initial research funding support ("the first olive out of the jar") to promising young surgical investigators with the stated goal of securing additional and significant outside (NIH and Corporate) funding to support the resident, the laboratory, and the Department.

Though legally distinct from the University of Minnesota, the Medical School, and its Department of Surgery, IBARS is the creation of members of the Department of Surgery, whose faculty and students have been and continue to be its primary beneficiaries.  While the relationship between IBARS and the University of Minnesota’s School of Medicine and Department of Surgery has been a strength, changes in the culture of academic medical research at the University, among other things, will require that IBARS look beyond, even while continuing to cultivate, its relationship to the University of Minnesota.