2019_Q2_Spring_AlertDiver

RESEARCH, EDUCATION & MEDICINE RESEARCHER PROFILE 50 | SPRING 2019 R ecreational diving is becoming more popular in China every year. With about 500,000 dive certifications issued in 2018 alone, there is increasing need for dive physicians, treatment facilities and research. Weigang Xu, M.D., Ph.D., current director of the Department of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine at the Military Medical University in Shanghai, is well-known in the field. He has worked as a dive physician since 1995; he received his doctorate in dive medicine in 2003 and became a professor in 2012. Head of the only organization in China eligible to train dive physicians for military, commercial and recreational diving, Dr. Xu has published more than 100 papers in domestic and international journals, authored 18 textbooks and monographs, and received numerous awards for his publications, teaching and research. In almost all Chinese academic organizations in the field of diving and hyperbaric medicine, Xu is either chair, vice chair or a committee expert member, and he has organized national and international academic conferences on the subject. He has also mentored most doctoral fellows in dive medicine in China for the current and past several years. Describing Xu’s research focus is a challenging task because his group has considered most aspects of current decompression theory. Staffed with a team of 10 researchers, his laboratory works on prevention and treatment of decompression sickness (DCS) on a cellular level as well as in animal models and human divers. The effect of decompression on blood vessels (vascular endothelial function) has been observed for many years, but the mechanism of injury is still disputed. How did you investigate the underlying causes of endothelial dysfunction? Weigang Xu CHALLENGING THE FRONTIERS OF DECOMPRESSION RESEARCH By Frauke Tillmans, Ph.D. Dr. Xu designed this dive training pool where scuba diving and surface-supplied diving and medical aid can be taught.