Paul Whelton is an American physician scientist who made seminal contributions to hypertension and kidney disease epidemiology. He also mentored numerous public health leaders including the Deans of the schools of public health at Johns Hopkins (Michael Klag) and Columbia (Linda Fried). He currently serves as the Chwan Health System Endowed Chair in Global Public Health and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He is the founding director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.