Mollie R. Freedman-Weiss, MD MHS is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the division of Pediatric Surgery and Pediatric Trauma at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York–Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.  She specializes in complex minimally invasive surgery including advanced laparoscopy, thoracoscopy, and robotic surgery for GI/colorectal surgery, thoracic surgery, and surgical oncology.  She enjoys a wide range of clinical interests and expertise, including counseling for prenatally-diagnosed fetal diseases, neonatal and congenital anomalies, gastrointestinal and colorectal issues including constipation/bowel management, oncology, repair of pectus excavatum, thoracic surgery, trauma care, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).

She received her undergraduate degree from Bucknell University and her medical degree from the University of Rochester.  She then spent nearly a decade training as a surgeon-scientist, first as a general surgery resident at Yale and then as a fellow in pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins.  During Dr. Freedman-Weiss’s surgical training, she was chosen by the Yale Department of Surgery and her peers to serve as the Administrative Chief Resident, responsible for more than seventy surgical residents across four hospitals. She also spent two years at the Yale School of Medicine researching outcomes in pediatric surgery as well as minimally invasive approaches to prenatally diagnosed diseases under Dr. David Stitelman. Concurrently, she studied surgical education and received a Masters of Health Sciences in Medical Education.

She has received numerous awards for clinical excellence, research, and education, including the Ira S. Goldenberg Intern of the Year from the Yale Department of Surgery, the Yale School of Medicine Power Award, the Chief Resident Award for Resident Education, the Chief Resident Award for Medical Student Education, a first-place podium prize at the 2020 New England Surgical Society Meeting, and the Johns Hopkins Frank L. Coulson Award for Clinical Excellence.

Dr. Freedman-Weiss has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on topics such as surgical education, Hirschsprung’s disease, fetal disorders, and using data-driven opioid prescribing practices to help curtail the opioid epidemic. Her current research is on optimizing both the training of surgeons and clinical outcomes in pediatric surgery as to inform best practices.