The Wound Healing Society welcomes its new president for 2026. We sat down with Dr. Robert Kirsner to talk about his roots in wound healing research, his vision for the society, and what comes next for the field.
You’ve spent your entire career at the University of Miami. How did wound healing become the center of it?
It goes back to medical school. The University of Miami’s Department of Dermatology has a long history with wound healing. The second department chair, Bill Eaglstein, was a founding member of the Wound Healing Society back in 1989. Because of his work, the department had built a small but serious group of faculty doing wound healing research and clinical care. I saw that as a medical student and knew I wanted to be part of it.
I went on to do a two-year clinical and laboratory fellowship in wound healing in the department, working in a lab, participating in clinical research, and helping see patients. My fellowship director, Vincent Falanga, was also a great leader in the field and former WHS president. So this scientific community has been part of my professional life from the very beginning. I’m now the next generation of University of Miami people who’ve been part of the Wound Healing Society.
You’ve been involved with WHS for over 20 years. How has the society changed over that time?
It used to be a small, tight-knit group of mostly laboratory-based researchers. A real mom-and-pop operation. It’s grown into a full organization with a strategic plan that covers laboratory and clinical research, advocacy, outreach, and education. The scope of what the society does has expanded tremendously.
But two things have stayed the same. The first is collegiality. People feel a genuine sense of belonging and shared mission. The second is quality. The quality of the people, the science, and the education has remained consistent even as we’ve grown from a handful of members to over a thousand. Those two things are foundational, and they’re what make WHS what it is.
What are the top priorities for your term as president?
The main goal is to improve the lives of patients with wounds. Everything we do connects back to that, but we reach it through several paths.
We want our researchers to have access to the best resources, tools, and education so they can push wound healing science forward. We want our clinicians to be part of cutting-edge clinical research and have the knowledge they need to advance the field, and we want our nurses, therapists, and other care providers to practice from a foundation of evidence and science rather than tradition or hearsay.
When all of those come together, patients’ lives get better. That’s our driving goal.
As you mentioned, WHS brings together basic scientists, translational researchers, clinicians, and industry professionals. How do you keep all of those groups feeling like the society belongs to them?
One of the challenges in wound care is that there’s no single educational pathway. There’s no dedicated residency or fellowship in wound care. People come to this field from very different backgrounds, both scientific and clinical, and from industry.
I sometimes describe it like the old story of the blindfolded people touching different parts of an elephant. One touches the tusk, another the trunk, another the ears. They each have a completely different sense of what they’re dealing with. Our job as a society is to help everyone see the full picture. To understand that all of these perspectives are part of something bigger: a community of people who are passionate about making patients’ lives better.
We do that through our annual meeting, our journals, our outreach, and now through social media and the digital presence we’re building. All of it reinforces the same idea: we are one community working toward a shared mission, no matter where we entered the field.
AI is reshaping every corner of medicine and science. How is WHS thinking about it?
AI is going to transform medicine and science in ways we’re only starting to understand. Five or ten years from now, the landscape will look significantly different than it does today.
What’s critical is that the expertise of our members drives that transformation. We don’t want AI to replace what our scientists, clinicians, and industry partners do. There’s too much at stake when we’re talking about patient care and scientific progress. But we absolutely want our members, who represent the leading experts in wound healing, to be the ones guiding how AI is applied in this field.
We’re excited about the possibilities. We just want to make sure it’s done in a way that truly serves the community.
The Young Professionals Network has been a growing focus for WHS. What does that program mean to you?
For young professionals, there’s real concern about how AI and other disruptions could affect their careers. We take that seriously and have to acknowledge it.
But the bigger mission of the YPN is this: we want people at every stage of their career to feel that wound healing is central to what they do. For a long time, wound care was a secondary focus for many practitioners and researchers. We want to change that. We want young professionals to see that there is a real, growing body of knowledge in wound healing, and that they can play a meaningful role in expanding it and putting it to work for patients.
What would you like the WHS community to know about you as you step into this role?
When I started in wound healing, the field was in its infancy. Now I’d say it’s reached its adolescence, maybe even young adulthood. We have a strategic plan that can help the field enter its prime. To watch that evolution happen over the course of a career is a rare thing, and I’m committed to helping it continue.
But I also want to be clear: while this article may focus on me, I’m just the face of the society for this year. WHS has a dedicated staff and a tremendous volunteer leadership and membership who do the hard work of making this organization great. They’re creative, committed people.
And if you’re reading this and you’re not yet involved, we want you to feel welcome. Get involved. All ships rise with a rising tide, and the more people who are engaged, the better this field becomes.