Gerald F. Gebhart received his Ph.D. from The University of Iowa (Pharmacology) in 1971, studied two years at the Université de Montréal, and began his academic career at Iowa in 1973.  He was Head of the Department of Pharmacology at Iowa from 1996 until his relocation to the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, where he was Director of the Center for Pain Research.

Dr. Gebhart is best known for his research into descending modulation of pain and mechanisms of visceral pain and has published more than 450 peer-reviewed research articles, reviews, and book chapters. His scientific contributions have been recognized by several awards, including a five-year Bristol Myers-Squibb Award for Excellence in Pain Research (1989), a 10 year MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health (1993), the Kerr Award from the American Pain Society (1994), the Purdue Pharma Prize for Pain Research (2004), a Janssen Award in Gastroenterology (2005), Founders Award from the American Academy of Pain Medicine (2006), the Patrick D. Wall Award from the British Pain Society (2012), the Distinguished Alumnus Award (Iowa, 2014), and has been identified by Tomson-ISI as a Highly Cited Researcher (Neuroscience). Dr. Gebhart is a Past President of the American Pain Society and of the International Association for the Study of Pain and was the founding editor of The Journal of Pain.