Dr. Viola founded Medicine For Peace in 1991 shortly after the Gulf War. Since then, he has guided medical and mental health programs during armed conflicts and natural disasters in El Salvador, Iraq, and Bosnia. He now oversees a comprehensive women’s health program in the rural Artibinite district of Haiti. Also, he directs the Medicine for Peace Center for Torture Victims at Grace Medical Center in West Baltimore, MD.

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Dr. Viola has been featured frequently on the Evening News, Good Morning America, the McLaughlin Report, Democracy Now, and on local TV stations exposing human rights abuses and promoting the mission of Medicine For Peace. His work in Iraq was the subject of two award-winning documentaries: William LiPera’s Children of the Cradle, and Susan Meisalis’s Breaking Hearts. He was awarded the Pax Christi Peacemakers Award, the 2018 McGill University Global Health Award for “extraordinary contributions to the global community”, and the 2019 TASSC International Human Rights Award.

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Dr. Viola has also held senior positions in academia (Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook) and at the U.S. Department of Energy where he was Director of Life and Medical Sciences in the Office of Science.