William V. McMichaelResearch

Research

From clinical question to interpretable evidence.

William's work centers on constructing reliable clinical evidence: clarifying the question, defining the cohort and outcomes, building the data, and working with clinical and statistical collaborators to communicate findings responsibly.

Current domains

Multidisciplinary clinical research.

  • Trauma & acute care surgery

    Risk, vulnerability, and decision-making after injury

    Work involving geriatric trauma, frailty, traumatic brain injury, anticoagulation and fall risk, and pediatric vascular injury. These studies examine how clinical characteristics and care pathways relate to outcomes in vulnerable populations.

    Methods: retrospective cohort design, Epic abstraction, database construction, outcome definition, and statistical collaboration.

  • Surgical outcomes

    Procedure, technique, and postoperative outcomes

    Research across pilonidal disease, surgical oncology, colorectal surgery, and ophthalmology, with attention to cohort construction, confounding, missingness, and clinically meaningful outcome definitions.

    Methods: chart review, data dictionaries, imaging-data abstraction, cohort refinement, and matching or adjustment planning.

  • Prospective research

    Study development and trial operations

    Experience supporting prospective registries and clinical trials through site startup, protocol and workflow development, regulatory documentation, pharmacy and investigator coordination, follow-up scheduling, and data recording.

    Scope: contributing to defined components of prospective study development and operations.

  • Neuroscience foundation

    Mechanism, signaling, and quantitative biology

    Prior research in microglial activation, dopamine D1 receptor signaling, cortical-amygdala activity, invertebrate neurobiology, and development of a yeast-based cellular neurotransmitter reporter.

    Methods: MATLAB, ImageJ/Fiji, fluorescence and confocal imaging, molecular biology, and bioinformatics.

Research practice

Responsibility across the study lifecycle.

  1. 01

    Define

    Translate a clinical question into explicit inclusion criteria, variables, exposures, outcomes, and timepoints.

  2. 02

    Construct

    Develop data dictionaries and abstraction workflows, build clinical datasets, and identify limitations before analysis.

  3. 03

    Collaborate

    Coordinate with physicians, statisticians, research administration, pharmacy, and multidisciplinary project teams.

  4. 04

    Communicate

    Prepare analysis requests, abstracts, posters, presentations, and manuscripts with claims calibrated to the data.