Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
Vice-Chair of Clinical and Translational Research
Director of Nutrition Support Services
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Paul Wischmeyer M.D. is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Colorado Health sciences Center, where he also serves as the Vice-Chair of Clinical and Translational Research and the Director of Nutrition Support Services. He has just begun his tenure as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

Dr. Wischmeyer graduated Magna Cum Laude with honors in chemistry from Valparaiso University. After earning his medical degree at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, he completed his anesthesiology residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Following residency he entered a Clinical Pharmacology Fellowship at the University of Chicago where he also completed the Clinical Research Scientist Training Program.

Dr. Wischmeyer began his pre-clinical research into the protective effects of glutamine as a college student at the Mayo Clinic, during which time he was awarded the American Gastroenterological Association’s Student Research Award for his work. He spent the next 15 years on research into the protective effect of glutamine in critical illness and cardiac disease. For his research, Dr. Wischmeyer has received numerous awards from national and international societies including the Shock Society’s Young Investigator Award, The John M. Kinney Award for the most significant contribution to the field of general nutrition for the year 2003, and the Young Investigator Award of the European Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. Dr. Wischmeyer was also recently given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Parenteral Nutrition Education and Methodology Advancement Society for significant contributions to advancing intravenous nutrition. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications in journals including American Journal of Physiology, Journal of Applied Physiology, Critical Care Medicine, Shock, and The Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. He has been an invited speaker at numerous international meetings and is the program chairman for the 2009 Society of Critical Care Medicine Congress.

Dr. Wischmeyer’s clinical focus is on Intensive Care Medicine and Critical Care Nutrition. He has been awarded numerous grants to study the potential beneficial effects of glutamine in patients in the peri-operative and critical care settings. He continues to perform basic mechanistic laboratory research on the pathways of glutamine’s protection. Specifically, Dr. Wischmeyer has made the seminal discovery that glutamine is protective to cells and tissues via manipulation of heat shock protein expression. Further, he has recently shown that glutamine is the first clinically relevant enhancer of heat shock protein expression in critically ill humans.