Suzanne Kilmer

Suzanne Linsmeier Kilmer, M.D., is a board-certified dermatologist, the founder of the Laser and Skin Surgery Center of Northern California, a Clinical Professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the most decorated and consequential laser medicine specialists in the history of the field. She has spent her career not just practicing laser dermatology but actively building the scientific evidence base that the entire specialty stands on today.

Dr. Kilmer earned her medical degree and completed her dermatology residency at UC Davis Medical Center. From there she headed east for a laser surgery fellowship at Harvard Medical School's Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine, one of the most prestigious laser research institutions in the world. She stayed at Harvard for two additional years as a faculty member, conducting research on Q-switched lasers for the treatment of tattoos and pigmented lesions and working with the rapidly pulsed CO2 lasers that would go on to become the standard technology for skin resurfacing. She was also involved in a study on burn depth diagnosis and debridement using pulsed CO2 laser technology during that period. By the time she returned to Sacramento, she had accumulated a combination of clinical training, academic research experience, and hands-on laser expertise that very few dermatologists in the country could match.

Upon her return to California, Dr. Kilmer founded the Laser and Skin Surgery Center of Northern California. What she built was not simply a dermatology practice. It became one of the most comprehensive laser and cosmetic skin surgery centers in the world, housing one of the widest collections of industry-tested laser devices available anywhere, and it has served as a hub for both patient care and clinical research for decades. The center now operates with a team of six board-certified dermatologists and an experienced nurse practitioner, and has treated over 100,000 patients. Her longtime associate, Dr. Vera A. Chotzen, has been with her from the early days, and together they were original investigators for laser resurfacing and co-pioneered the use of the erbium laser for wrinkle and acne scar removal.

What truly distinguishes Dr. Kilmer's career is the depth and breadth of her research. She has served as a principal investigator in the original clinical trials for an extraordinary range of technologies that are now considered standard of care across dermatology: UltraPulse CO2 laser skin resurfacing, ruby laser hair removal, pulsed dye and fractional lasers for wrinkles and scars, picosecond laser treatment of tattoos, pigmented lesions, acne scars and pico-toning, microwave technology for the treatment of hyperhidrosis, cryolipolysis for noninvasive fat reduction, tissue tightening devices, body shaping devices, and multiple cosmetic injectable studies. That list is not a career summary. It is closer to a timeline of the last three decades of innovation in aesthetic and laser dermatology. A significant percentage of the devices and procedures used in dermatology offices around the world today went through Dr. Kilmer's practice first, under her supervision, generating the safety and efficacy data that made approval and adoption possible.

Her peers have recognized her accordingly. She was selected by fellow physicians as one of the "Best Doctors in America" and named one of the "Top Ten Laser Experts" in the country. She served as President of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery from 2002 to 2003, and has also served on the ASLMS Board of Directors, its standards of training committee, nominating committee, finance committee, laser certification task force, and as laser safety director, vice president, and secretary. She has served on the Board of Directors for the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery as well.

The awards that have followed reflect a career of sustained, field-shaping contribution. She was the 2008 Sturge-Weber Foundation honoree and the 2009 recipient of the prestigious ASLMS Ellet Drake Lectureship Award. In 2014, she was named the ASDS Iron Surgeon. In 2020, she received three major honors: the Vic Narurkar MD Innovations in Aesthetic Dermatology Lectureship, the ASLMS Leon Goldman Award, and the ASLMS Caroline and William Mark Memorial Award. The last two are particularly significant. Both are awarded for longitudinal excellence across a career, and Dr. Kilmer was the first physician in the history of the organization to receive both in the same year. The ASLMS awards committee noted that when their vote results in one person winning more than one award, they typically select the runner-up for one of them. In Dr. Kilmer's case, the committee made an exception because the votes were so decisive that choosing anyone else would not have reflected the will of the membership.

She is widely published, sits on numerous medical advisory boards, lectures annually at national and international dermatology meetings, and directs several laser training courses that help other physicians learn the techniques and technologies she helped develop and validate. Her publication record includes research on fractional lasers, radiofrequency devices, ultrasound technologies, cryolipolysis, diode lasers for fat reduction, picosecond laser applications, and sebum-selective laser treatment for acne, among many other topics.

Outside the clinic and the lecture hall, Dr. Kilmer is a skier, a surfer, and a mother of three.

There is a handful of physicians in any generation whose research and clinical work do not merely participate in the progress of a field but actually set its direction. Suzanne Kilmer is one of them. The lasers that dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons reach for every day, the protocols they follow, the safety data they rely on, and the patient outcomes they promise all trace back, in many cases directly, to work she did first. She did not just adopt the tools of modern laser dermatology. She tested them, proved them, published the evidence, trained the physicians, and led the professional societies that set the standards. That is a career that very few people in any branch of medicine can claim.