Jarret Weinrich, PhD

Dr. Weinrich a neuroscientist and Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care. His research combines brain imaging, drug discovery, and machine learning to improve how we understand and treat pain. He is especially interested in how general anesthetics work in the brain, why they sometimes fail to fully block the experience of pain, and how to develop safer, more effective alternatives to those currently used.

Currently, Dr. Weinrich is a part of a team at UCSF working to develop the next generation of battlefield anesthetics—drugs designed to be safe, fast-acting, and easy to administer in any setting. He leads efforts to study how these compounds affect brain function and physiological responses in mice, using in vivo brain recordings and non-invasive physiological monitoring powered by machine learning.

Beyond drug discovery, Dr. Weinrich is developing new AI-powered tools for automated pain assessment in rodents, which are helping to accelerate the search for non-addictive pain treatments. With collaborations across departments—including Orthopedic Surgery, Anesthesia, and Anatomy —his lab works to develop and characterize improved models of injuries such as shoulder damage, bone fractures, and joint degeneration. These models are designed to better reflect real-world pain conditions and allow for more effective testing of treatments.

Dr. Weinrich earned his PhD in Biochemistry, Cell, and Molecular Biology from Weill Cornell Graduate School, after completing undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Neuroscience at the University of Miami. His work has been supported by NIH, NASA, and DARPA.

Dr. Weinrich also mentor trainees at all levels, training them to work across disciplines and translate discoveries in the lab into real-world impact.