Since 1992, Dr. Prough has been the Rebecca Terry White Distinguished Chair of Anesthesiology and Professor of Anesthesiology, Neurology, Pathology and Allied Health Sciences (Respiratory Care) at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). From September 1, 2011 to August 30, 2012, Dr. Prough served as Interim Dean of Medicine for UTMB.

Dr. Prough received an MD from Pennsylvania State University in 1973. He completed a residency in Anesthesiology and a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center from 1973 to 1977, and a mini-fellowship in Cardiac Anesthesiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1977. Dr. Prough received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the American College of Critical Care Medicine in 1999 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists in 2001. He served as a Scientific Editor for Critical Care Medicine from 1997-2022.

Dr. Prough’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Moody Foundation, and other sources. His most recent research projects involve the development of optoacoustic technology, which he co-invented, to provide continuous, noninvasive measure of blood oxygenation in traumatic brain injury victims, patients at risk for shock, and intrapartum fetuses and newborns.