Joseph C. Wenke, PhD arrived at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, TX as a National Research Council Postdoctoral fellow in 2003.  The following year he accepted a position at ISR as a Research Physiologist and is now the manager for the Extremity Trauma & Regenerative Medicine Task Area and the Orthopaedic Extremity Trauma Research Program.  His primary research focus is improving outcomes of open fractures.  Much of his previous the work has been focused on improving early therapies (e.g., wound irrigation techniques, negative pressure wound therapy, and local delivery of antibiotics); current and future projects focus on regenerating bone in a contaminated bone defect and organizing clinical studies.  One of the main strengths of his research program is the ability to utilize or develop clinically relevant orthopaedic trauma animal models to evaluate different therapies or develop clinical guidelines. 
 
Dr. Wenke received a Bachelor of Science from Baylor University in 1997 and a PhD from Texas A&M University in 2003.  Skeletal muscle plasticity and injury was his main areas of research while in graduate school.