Kristin Schreiber, MD, PhD, Appointed Chief of Regional Anesthesiology

April 16, 2025

The Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine is pleased to announce the appointment of Kristin Schreiber, MD, PhD, as the new Chief of Regional Anesthesiology, effective October 2025.

Dr. Schreiber is a highly distinguished translational neuroscientist and regional anesthesiologist whose research has advanced understanding of the transition from acute to chronic pain following surgical injury. She currently serves as Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, and holds an Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology.

Her clinical work has focused on the management of acute pain and the acute-chronic pain transition, employing regional anesthesia and multimodal analgesia. Her research program centers on understanding mechanisms underlying the transition from acute to chronic pain following surgical injury. She investigates how individual differences in psychosocial factors—such as anxiety, depression, and pain catastrophizing—as well as nociceptive sensitivity, mechanistically confer a risk of developing chronic postsurgical pain. 

Dr. Schreiber is currently the Principal Investigator of a NIH R35 grant titled “Personalizing Perioperative Preventive Analgesia: Translational Studies Investigating the Biopsychosocial Underpinnings of Enhanced Pain Propensity,” and Co-PI on a T90/R90 training grant, “Mass General Brigham Interdisciplinary Clinical Pain Research Training Program”, as well as a mentor and co-investigator on several other grants.

She also serves as a section editor at Pain Medicine and a handling editor at Anesthesiology. She has served as Chair of the International Anesthesia Research Society’s Mentored Research Award Study Section and as a reviewer on NIH and VA study sections. She has participated in efforts to standardize the measurement of pain and pain phenotypes in research, including as part of EPPIC-NET and ACTTION (Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks).

Dr. Schreibers research has been recognized with multiple honors, including the 2022 James Cottrell Presidential Award from the American Society of Anesthesiologists. She is also a deeply committed mentor and was honored last year with her Department’s Excellence in Mentoring Award.

She earned both her MD and PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota, where her graduate research focused on neural-immune interactions involved in the development of pain and infection. She completed her residency in Anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh and a fellowship in regional anesthesia at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

This transition follows the extraordinary leadership of Dr. Jean-Louis Horn, the inaugural Chief of Regional Anesthesiology at Stanford. Dr. Horn will continue in his role until Dr. Schreiber’s arrival.

Lindsay Blauvelt
Communications Manager
Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
blauvelt@stanford.edu
(650) 723-6412