Our Mission Statement
The mission of the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research is to identify and promote ever-improving methods to prevent premature death and reduce associated disability from traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, and other forms of acute brain injury, in people with “hearts and brains too good to die.”
The Safar Center for Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine was founded by the late Dr. Peter Safar in 1979, initially as the International Resuscitation Research Center. Recognizing Dr. Safar’s innumerable contributions to the field of resuscitation medicine, it was renamed the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in 1994. The Center’s research programs address the development of therapeutics and diagnostics for acute brain injury across the continuum of care, from the field, emergency department, intensive care unit, rehabilitation, and long-term outcome, and across the age spectrum from infants to the elderly.
To achieve its goals, center investigators in the departments of Critical Care Medicine, Neurological Surgery, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Pediatrics, Surgery, Emergency Medicine, Anesthesiology, and others at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, work closely with investigators in numerous other departments and schools on the Pitt campus, along with a host of national and international collaborators. In addition to conducting basic, translational, and clinical research, Safar Center investigators also train the next generation of resuscitation researchers. The Safar Center is an 11,000-square-foot state-of-the-art research facility located in the Rangos Research Center on the Campus of UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh that houses the laboratories of scientists and clinician-scientists working across a broad spectrum of fields important to resuscitation medicine.