Dr. Matthew B. Weinger, holds the Norman Ty Smith Chair in Patient Safety and Medical Simulation and is a Professor of Anesthesiology, Biomedical Informatics, and Medical Education in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is the Director of the Center for Research and Innovation in Systems Safety (CRISS) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. 

Dr. Weinger has been teaching and conducting research in patient safety, human factors engineering, human-centered design in healthcare, clinical informatics, healthcare simulation, and clinical decision making for more than three decades. His current interests focus on the design and implementation of technology and systems that improve the ability of clinicians and patients to enhance individual and population health. 

Dr. Weinger has more than 200 publications which have been cited more than 4200 times. He has been an investigator on more than 50 grants and contracts, including 14 as the principal investigator, receiving more than $13 million in direct federal and major foundation research support. 

Dr. Weinger is on the Board (recently stepping down as the Secretary) of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) and has also held leadership roles in the Anesthesia Quality Institute, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, and the Society for Technology in Anesthesia (STA). He has provided decades of service to the ASA and the ABA and is a member of the FAER Academy of Research Mentors. 

Dr. Weinger is a member of the Board on Human-System Integration of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He served on the consensus committee that generated the National Academy of Medicine’s 2019 report on clinician burnout. He is the only physician Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

In these various roles, Dr. Weinger has fostered the career development of junior faculty, promoted funding for patient safety research, and advocated for structured handovers, the use of pre-procedure checklists, better training in the use of complex medical technologies, and for continuous electronic monitoring of hospitalized patients receiving parenteral opioids.

Dr. Weinger received a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a Master’s degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1978. He completed his MD degree at the University of California–San Diego in 1982 and did his anesthesiology residency training at the University of California–San Francisco.