Dr. Grunau’s primary research interest is methods to improve outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). He is the co-director of the BC Resuscitation Research Collaborative (RESURECT), which maintains a provincial Cardiac Arrest Registry and investigates novel OHCA innovations, and is the Resuscitation Innovation Lead for the BC Emergency Medicine Network, with translates research into practise. He has received over $6 million in research funding and published over 90 peer-reviewed articles, including as first author in high impact journals such as JAMA and Circulation. He is currently the PI for a $2.2 million national project examining COVID-related occupational risks among paramedics and comparative immunogenicity of vaccination strategies. Extracorporeal CPR (ECPR) is a research interest, and he played the lead role in developing an ECPR program for OHCA in Vancouver. Dr. Grunau is funded by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He is a Medical Research Consultant for BC Emergency Health Services, BC’s single provincial out-of-hospital medical provider, to support research, special projects, and quality-improvement initiatives.

Dr. Grunau is the co-chair of the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium cardiac arrest committee, and volunteers for the Heart & Stroke Foundation as a scientific content expert to inform national policy. He has spoken to international audiences, has contributed to international ELSO ECPR guidelines, and has authored chapters in Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medical Services: Clinical Practice and Systems Oversight, and ELSO’s ECPR and Resuscitative ECMO.