Mauricio Lisker-Melman, MD

Mauricio Lisker-Melman, MD, professor of medicine, is honored for his devotion to teaching and his extraordinary dedication to mentoring residents and clinical fellows.

Internationally recognized for his management of liver patients, Lisker-Melman has served as director of the hepatology training program since he joined the faculty in 2000. Fellows describe him as an outstanding didactic and hands-on educator. As he oversees one of the busiest clinical services and coordinates the care of patients with complex diseases, Lisker-Melman continuously finds time to offer outstanding clinical lessons and to demonstrate how to develop rewarding and compassionate patient-caregiver relationships. Well-loved by his many trainees, Lisker-Melman is affectionately known as “El Maestro” or “The Teacher,” and has built a reputation for opening conversations with a joke or fun medical teaser to challenge his residents.

Lisker-Melman received the first of what has become multiple teaching awards just two years after he joined the faculty. He is a five-time recipient of Professor of the Year awards in the Division of Gastroenterology and the Department of Internal Medicine. He also is a board member and career mentor in the department’s Mentor in Medicine program.

Lisker-Melman earned his medical degree in 1980 from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. After completing a gastroenterology-endoscopy fellowship, he worked in the Liver Diseases Section of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; in his native Mexico, he founded the first Viral Hepatitis Research Laboratory in the Instituto Nacional de la Nutrición Salvador Zubirán before joining the Washington University faculty. Lisker-Melman is a prolific author in peer-review journals and a frequent professor and lecturer at national and international medical meetings. Recently he was bestowed the honor of membership of the National Academy of Medicine in Mexico.