Paul Riegelhaupt, MD, PhD Image It has been a busy decade since my family and I left UCSF and San Francisco to settle down near family in New York. I have been at Weill Cornell for the duration, where I have started a research laboratory, served as an associate program director for our anesthesiology residency, and am now co-director of our Van Poznak research residency track. In the OR, I have gravitated to neuroanesthesia and find myself regularly drawing on what I learned from UCSF mentors like Drs. Adrian Gelb, Pekka Talke, and Chanhung Lee. In the lab, my group studies the pharmacology and physiology of anesthetic sensitive potassium channels. These proteins became a fascination of mine during my UCSF research track residency training with Dr. Daniel Minor and I have been studying them ever since. I started my own research program about a year after arriving at Weill Cornell, first with an MRTG grant from the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) and then subsequently with K08 and R01 funding from the NIH. In the lab, we have had a great time expanding our reach and focus, incorporating new functional and structural biophysical techniques, and collaborating with an international set of likeminded scientists. Our work has been recognized by several research awards, though none have been more personally meaningful to me than the William L. Young Neuroscience Research Award from the Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesia and Critical Care (SNACC). Dr. Young (Bill) was the one to give me my start as an anesthesiologist researcher at UCSF and he and Dr. Judith Hellman really helped launch my career. It has not all been smooth sailing. The COVID-19 pandemic turned me from a four-day-a-week researcher to a full-time makeshift intensivist for a few months, caring for intubated patients lined up three in a room in our ORs. When things were pretty dark, seeing Dr. Lundy Campbell, my residency classmate Dr. Wei Zhou, and Weill Cornell alum Dr. Melvin La show up in our hospitals to pitch in and help was a real shot in the arm (pun intended) and reminded me what a special place UCSF is. In the few minutes of quiet time, Melvin introduced me to a new sourdough baking fad that several UCSF faculty members were taking on together under the tutelage of local expert Dr. Gerald Dubowitz. I received a sourdough starter care package in the mail from Dubowitz a few weeks later and I was hooked. Five years later and I still have that starter going in my fridge. I’m not quite Arizmendi quality, but my kids are real bread snobs now and only want the homemade stuff… Paul Riegelhaupt, MD, PhDUCSF Class of 2014 Submit your story here. Included in this issue:Chair's LetterClinical HighlightsEducation HighlightsResearch HighlightsStaff HighlightsOur PeopleCulture and Belonging and Global Health EquityOur SitesDevelopment
