Dr. Knudson is Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco and an attending surgeon at the San Francisco General Trauma Center. She is the Principal Investigator for the San Francisco Injury Center for Research and Prevention, a center that has received continuous funding from the CDC for over 20 years. Dr. Knudson is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Medicine and completed her surgical residency at the Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School and the University of Michigan Medical School. She had additional fellowship training in pediatric surgery at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Her primary interest is in trauma/critical care, and she served as the Trauma Director at San Jose Medical Center and as the Associate Trauma Director at Stanford before joining the faculty at UCSF. Dr. Knudson has served on the Board of Managers of both the Western Trauma Association and of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma. She coordinated multi-institutional trials for the Western Trauma Association for 10 years. Dr. Knudson just completed a four-year term as Vice Chair of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, and after 17 years on that committee, received the 2010 National Safety Council Award for Service to Safety. As a participant in the AAST/COT Senior Visiting Surgeons Program, Dr. Knudson has been involved in the care of injured soldiers at both Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Balad Air Force Hospital in Iraq, and she is working with the military to develop the world-wide military trauma system.

Dr. Knudson's research interests include the use of ultrasound in trauma/critical care, resuscitation from shock, coagulation disorders after injury, global trauma care and all aspects of injury prevention. She currently serves as the Chairperson of the National Trauma Institute's Science Committee.