Dr. Stephan Schwarz, MD, Dr. med, PhD, FRCPC
Dr. Stephan Schwarz obtained his primary medical degree as well as a postgraduate medical research doctorate from the University of Göttingen/Germany. In 1995, he relocated to Vancouver/Canada to pursue a PhD in Pharmacology & Therapeutics at UBC, followed by a residency in anesthesia and completion of the Royal College of Physician and Surgeons of Canada Clinician Investigator Program (CIP).
In 2004, he became member of the anesthesia staff at downtown Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital, where he subsequently was appointed Anesthesia Research Director, a position he occupied for three terms. Simultaneously, he was appointed as Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011 and full Professor in 2017. In 2014, Dr. Schwarz was awarded UBC’s endowed Dr. Jean Templeton Hugill Chairship in Anesthesia.
A passionate lecturer, Dr. Schwarz has been an invited speaker at many national and international conferences and in addition of his research recognitions has won numerous teaching awards; in 2017, he was awarded a UBC Killam Teaching Prize, UBC’s most prestigious award in recognition of excellence in education.
In his research, Dr. Schwarz has aimed as a clinician-scientist to build bridges between bench and bedside. Over the course of his career, Dr. Schwarz has used both in vitro and in vivo laboratory techniques as well as clinical studies. A particular area of focus has been the basic and clinical pharmacology of anesthesia and analgesia, with an emphasis on local anesthetic pharmacology & therapeutics. Dr. Schwarz’ clinical research has centred around adult anesthesia, regional anesthesia, perioperative medicine, and postoperative analgesia. For his research, Dr. Schwarz has won numerous national awards from the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS) and has served on the CAS Research Advisory Committee, the CAS Grant Adjudication Subcommittee, and the CAS Ethics Committee.
Taking advantage of his multidisciplinary training and activities that include clinical anesthesiology, basic neurosciences and pharmacology, evidence-based medicine, experimental design, and data analysis, Dr. Schwarz is a veteran, internationally recognized editorial peer reviewer. He has been presented with “Top Reviewer” awards from Anesthesiology and the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and has served as a peer reviewer for The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. In 2014, Dr. Schwarz was appointed to the Editorial Board of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia; in 2020, he was selected as the Journal’s new Editor-in-Chief, a position which he has occupied since January 1, 2021.