Dave Gustafson is Research Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin−Madison where he founded and directs the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies. The Center includes a Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research (National Cancer Institute), the national program office for the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx), and Center of Excellence on Active Aging Research (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). His implementation research interests focus on developing systems engineering tools to encourage individual and organizational change.  His individual change research develops and tests computer systems to help people deal with serious illness; organizational change research produces models to predict and explain implementation, sustainability and diffusion of innovations, as well as models to measure quality of care and understand customer needs. During his leadership NIATx has grown to an organization of more 3000 addiction treatment agencies and has conducted nationwide experiments to test the effectiveness of quality improvement models to enhance access to and retention in addiction treatment.

Dave is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Association for Health Services Research, the American Medical Informatics Association, the W K Kellogg Foundation, co-chaired the federal Science Panel on Interactive Communications in Health and helped found and is a Fellow and past vice-chair of the board of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.  He is a member of the NIH Healthcare Implementation and Dissemination Study Section.