History

Since 1989, the Wound Healing Society has grown from a founding vision into the premier international organization advancing the science and practice of wound healing, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and industry partners from around the world.

MAY 1989

WHS Founded

A group of pioneering clinicians and researchers establishes WHS as the first scientific society dedicated entirely to wound healing research.

1993

A Journal Is Born

Wound Repair and Regeneration launches as the field’s flagship peer-reviewed journal, becoming the leading publication in wound healing science.

2007

SAWC Partnership

WHS co-locates its annual meeting with SAWC, one of the nation’s leading wound care conferences, dramatically expanding the society’s reach to practicing clinicians.

2010s

Guidelines & Education

Landmark clinical guidelines are published. Advances in Wound Care launches in 2012. The Young Professionals Network and Wound Healing U expand the community and deepen member education.

TODAY

1175+ Members. One Mission.

WHS is the premier international organization for wound healing research, home to two respected journals, robust grants and fellowships, and a growing community built for the next generation of scientists and clinicians.

Our Story

The History of WHS

From a small group of dedicated scientists to the field’s premier international
organization, here is how WHS came to be.

The Beginning

The Wound Healing Society was founded in May 1989 through the efforts of a group of dedicated wound healing researchers and clinicians who recognized that the science deserved its own dedicated scientific home. The idea was initiated in 1987 by Dr. I. Kelman Cohen of the Medical College of Virginia, who began organizing a formal community around wound healing research and education. Thomas K. Hunt, Dr. Adrian Barbul, Dr. Robert Diegelmann, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, and others joined the effort, and the Society was formally established at a meeting in Bethesda, Maryland in April 1988.

The idea had been building for years. In 1987, Dr. I. Kelman Cohen of the Medical College of Virginia began circulating the concept of a formal organization dedicated to wound healing research and education. By April 1988, a group of founding investigators gathered at the Uniformed Services Medical School in Bethesda, Maryland, to organize what would become the Wound Healing Society. Thomas K. Hunt was elected as the Society’s first president, serving a two-year term, with Adrian Barbul as the first treasurer and Robert Diegelmann as inaugural secretary. The first annual meeting was hosted by Marty Robson in Galveston, Texas.

From its earliest days, WHS set out to fill a critical gap: a genuinely interdisciplinary forum where basic scientists and bedside practitioners could learn from and challenge one another. That founding conviction, that understanding wound biology is fundamental to improving patient outcomes, remains the organizing principle of the Society today.

Growth and Development

At the Society’s second annual meeting, held in Richmond, Virginia, the decision was made to establish a peer-reviewed journal. After considerable discussion, the title Wound Repair and Regeneration was selected, with Thomas K. Hunt and Bill Lindblad serving as the inaugural co-editors. The journal launched in the early 1990s and quickly became the authoritative scientific voice in wound care, giving the field a dedicated outlet for clinical and basic science research in tissue repair and regeneration.

Membership grew steadily as word spread that WHS offered something no other organization did: a forum where surgeons, dermatologists, cell biologists, industry researchers, and government agencies could engage together around the science of wound healing. The Society also established early relationships with the FDA, working to educate regulators on the essentials of wound healing and to shape how new wound healing agents would be evaluated for approval.

By the turn of the millennium, WHS had grown into a truly international organization, with members spanning academia, clinical practice, industry, and government across dozens of countries.

WHS Today

Today the Wound Healing Society represents more than 1,175 members from 33 countries, spanning every corner of the wound healing field. The annual meeting, held jointly as SAWC Spring, draws more than 3,000 attendees each year and remains the premier scientific gathering for wound healing researchers and clinicians worldwide.

Wound Repair and Regeneration has published more than 180 issues since its launch in 1993, with each issue covering basic, translational, and clinical wound healing research. The Society has expanded its programs to include the WHS Fellows Program, the Young Professionals Network, research grants, early career awards, clinical practice guidelines, and a growing library of educational content through Wound Healing U.

More than 35 years after Thomas K. Hunt gathered a small group of scientists around a shared conviction, WHS continues to advance the science of wound healing and bring its findings into clinical practice, one discovery, one guideline, and one new member at a time.

Read the original article in Wound Repair and Regeneration.

Past WHS Presidents

The leaders who have shaped the Society’s direction and advanced its mission across more than three decades.

Sundeep Keswani

2024-2025

Dr. Sundeep Keswani is the Associate Surgeon-in-Chief at Texas Children’s Hospital and holds the Clayton Endowed Chair in Surgical Research. A pediatric surgeon specializing in fetal therapy and ECMO, he leads an NIH-funded laboratory, has published over 160 articles, mentors trainees, and serves as an Executive Governor with the American College of Surgeons.

Traci Wilgus, PhD

2023-2024

Dr. Wilgus is a Fellow Scientist at Regeneron leading a team focused on keloid and fibrosis research.

Ken Liechty, MD

2022-2023

Ken Liechty, MD, is the division chief of pediatric surgery in the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Surgery, as well as director of fetal medicine at Banner – University Medicine and surgeon-in-chief of Banner Children’s at Diamond Children’s Medical Center.

Alan Wells, MD, DMSc

2021-2022

Geoffrey Gurtner, MD

2019-2021

Sashwati Roy, PhD

2018-2019

Elof Eriksson, MD

2017-2018

Marjana Tomic Canic, PhD

2016-2017

Marjana Tomic-Canic, PhD, holds the Eaglstein Chair in Wound Healing and directs the Wound Healing and Regenerative Medicine Research Program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. A WHS member for 25 years and its 2016-2017 president, she has published 175 peer-reviewed articles establishing the field of human wound genomics and received the WHS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Andrew Baird, PhD

2015-2016

Lisa J. Gould, MD, PhD

2014-2015

Lisa Gould, MD, PhD, FACS has been practicing plastic and reconstructive surgery with an emphasis on difficult wound problems since 1999. A dedicated surgeon-scientist, she brings her passion for innovative wound research and education to her clinical practice, students at all levels, new investigators and the national organizations she serves.

Paul Liu, MD

2013-2014

Robert Diegelmann, PhD

2012-2013

Harriet Hopf, MD

2011-2012

Professor, Anesthesiology and Bioengineering, University of Utah. TK Hunt mentee and WHS member since 1989. Recognized infection control expert, leader, coach and mentor.

Luisa DiPietro, DDS, PhD

2010-2011

Luisa A. DiPietro is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. Over 25 years, her lab has studied mechanisms of wound healing and regeneration, focusing on inflammation, angiogenesis, and oral mucosal repair. She is the proud mentor of >70 trainees, many of whom continue to advance the field.

Patricia A. Hebda, PhD

2009-2010

Patricia A. Hebda, PhD, spent her faculty career at the University of Pittsburgh researching wound healing in skin and mucosa, tissue engineering, and biological therapies for tissue regeneration. A longtime WHS leader, she served as president in 2009-2010 and as editor-in-chief of Wound Repair and Regeneration for a decade from 2006 to 2015.

Allen Holloway, MD

2008-2009

Dr. Holloway graduated from Harvard Medical School, and served on the faculty at the University of Washington, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona where he worked in the Department of Surgery at Valleywise Hospital in Phoenix. He has done extensive research and been widely published.

Adrian Barbul, MD*

2006-2008

A General and Trauma Surgeon, Dr. Barbul led a research laboratory examining the influence of amino acid nutrition and immunity of the healing cascade. He has authored over 190 original publications, over 50 textbook chapters and has edited two books. As founding member and then President of the Wound Healing Society, he led a team charged with the promulgation of care guidelines for arterial, diabetic, venous and pressure ulcers which have been widely disseminated, and more recently updated.

Jeffrey Davidson, PhD

2005-2006

Vincent Falanga, MD

2004-2005

Lillian B. Nanney, PhD

2003-2004

David L. Steed, MD

2001-2003

Gregory S. Schultz, PhD

1999-2001

Thomas A. Mustoe, MD

1997-1999

Richard A. F. Clark, MD

1996-1997

Martin C. Robson, MD

1995-1996

Anita B. Roberts, PhD

1994-1995

I. Kelman Cohen, MD

1993-1994

H. Paul Ehrlich, PhD

1992-1993

Thomas K. Hunt, MD

1989-1992

Past Board of Directors

A record of the individuals who have served on the WHS Board of Directors since the Society’s founding.

Past Board of Directors

Adrian Barbul, MD

2016–2019

Arie Philips, PhD

2016–2019

Heather Powell, PhD

2016–2018

Robert Galiano, MD, FACS

2015–2018

Harriet Hopf, MD

2015–2018

Sundeep Keswani, MD, FACS, FAAP

2015–2018

Katherine Radek, PhD

2015–2018

Braham Shroot, PhD

2006–2018

Boris Hinz, PhD

2014–2017

Olivera Stojadinovic, MD

2013–2016

Susan Volk, MVD, PhD

2013–2016

Susan Opalenik, PhD

2014–2015

Barbara Bates-Jensen, PhD

2012-2015

H. Paul Ehrlich, PhD

2012–2015

Geoffrey Gurtner, MD

2012–2015

Manuela Martins-Green, PhD

2012–2015

Gayle Gordillo, MD

2011–2014

Kenneth Liechty, MD

2011–2014

James J. Tomasek, PhD

2011–2014

Joyce K. Stechmiller, PhD

2010–2013

Stephanie Bernatchez, PhD

2009–2012

Nicole Gibran, MD

2009–2012

Robert Kirsner, MD, PhD

2006-2012

Laura K.S. Parnell, BS, MS, CWS

2006-2012

Laura Bolton, PhD

2008–2011

Lillian Nanney, PhD

2008–2011

Alan Wells, PhD

2008–2011

Robert Diegelmann, PhD

2007–2010

Oluyinka Olutoye, MD, PhD

2007–2010

Chandan Sen, PhD

2007–2010

Adrian Barbul, MD, FACS

2006-2009

Luisa DiPietro, DDS, PhD

2006-2009

Thomas Mustoe, MD

2006-2009

Jeffrey Davidson, PhD

2005-2008

Kris Kieswetter, PhD

2005-2008

Robert Warriner, III, MD

2005-2008

Lisa Gould, MD, PhD

2004-2007

David Margolis

2004-2007

Bill Tawil, PhD

2004-2007

Thomas Serena, MD, FACS

2003-2006

Timothy Crombleholme, MD

2001-2004

Harriet Hopf, MD

2001-2004

Linda Phillips, MD

2001-2004

Patricia Hebda, PhD

2000-2002

Edward E. Tredget, MD

2000-2002

Past Board of Directors

No Term

Judith Abraham, PhD

Carlos Blanco, MD

Michael Caldwell, MD, PhD

I. Kelman Cohen, MD

William Eaglstein, MD

Elof Eriksson, MD, PhD

Michael Franz, MD

Michael Caldwell, MD, PhD

JoAnne Whitney, PhD

Katherine Sprugel

David G. Greenhalgh, MD

Gregory Schultz, PhD

Allen Holloway, MD

Andrew Johnson, MS, MBA

W. Lawrence, MD

George Martin, PhD

John McPherson

Mary Beth Regan, PhD

George Rodeheaver, PhD

Christopher Attinger, MD

Henry Brown

Vincent Falanga, MD

Richard Clark, MD

Annette Wysocki, PhD

David Steed, MD

Peter Sheehan, MD

Diane Cooper, PhD

H. Paul Ehrlich, PhD

Vincent Falanga, MD

Warren Garner, MD

Fred Grinnell, PhD

Thomas Hunt, MD

Thomas Krummel, MD

William Lindblad, PhD

Bruce Mast, MD

Ben Walthall

Braham Shroot, PhD

Dorne Yager, PhD

Steve Powick

Anthony Sank

Martin Robson, MD

Bengt Zederfelt

Warren Rohtmann, PhD

Photo Gallery

Annual meeting moments, board gatherings, and community milestones captured
over 35 years.

Explore Our Organization

Learn more about who we are, what drives our science, and how WHS is shaping the future
of wound healing research and clinical practice.

Mission & Vision

WHS exists to advance wound healing science and bring its findings into clinical practice. Our mission unites basic researchers, translational scientists, and clinicians around a shared commitment to improving patient outcomes.

Leadership

Meet the researchers and clinicians who guide WHS. Our leadership represents the full breadth of the wound healing field, from basic science to clinical practice, and brings decades of combined expertise to the organization.

History

Founded in 1989, WHS has spent more than three decades building the scientific home that wound healing research deserves. Explore how the society grew from a founding vision into the premier international organization in the field.

Bylaws & Governance

WHS is governed by its members and guided by transparent, peer-driven principles. Review our bylaws and organizational structure to understand how decisions are made and how the society is accountable to its community.

Contact

Have a question about membership, the annual meeting, research grants, or partnership opportunities? Our team is here to help.

Fellows & Recognition

Meet the researchers and clinicians who have been honored for their outstanding contributions to wound healing science and to the WHS community.