Dr. Dewesh Agrawal is professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Since 2003, he has worked as a physician in the Children’s National Emergency Department. From 2007-2020, he served as the Program Director for Pediatric Residency Training at Children’s National Hospital. In 2019, Dr. Agrawal took over as the Vice-Chair for Medical Education and ACGME Designated Institutional Official at Children’s National.
Dr. Agrawal was born in Pittsburgh, PA and raised in Toledo, OH. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Economics from Duke University in 1993 graduating summa cum laude, and he completed his Medical Degree from the University of Michigan Medical School where he graduated in 1997 as class valedictorian. He then went on to complete his internship and residency in pediatrics and fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is a graduate of the Master Teacher Program in Medical Education and Leadership Development at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Agrawal has been part of different teams of investigators who have been awarded several national medical education awards in pediatrics, including the American Board of Pediatrics Initiative for Innovation in Pediatric Education, the Academic Pediatric Association Ray E. Helfer Award for Innovation in Medical Education, the Pediatric Hospital Medicine Award for Educational Achievement and Innovation, and the Academic Pediatric Association Teaching Program Award (in both 2013 and 2018). In addition, he has co-presented dozens of professional development workshops at major national academic meetings including annual meetings of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of Pediatric Program Directors, and Pediatric Academic Societies.
Dr. Agrawal’s passion is education, and he is the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the prestigious 2005 Golden Apple Award from the Children’s National house staff and the 2019 Distinguished Teacher Award from the George Washington University School of Medicine. He enjoys traveling, running, and most of all spending time with his two children.
Dewesh Agrawal, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine
Vice-Chair for Education & ACGME DIO
Children’s National Hospital
Dr. Manuel Ricardo Amieva is a Professor of Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases and also of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University. As a clinician he cares for children with complicated infectious diseases and as a scientist he focuses his research on exploring how bacterial pathogens colonize and manipulate epithelial surfaces to persist in our bodies, and how mucosal colonization can lead to diseases like ulcers of the stomach and cancer. His lab has developed many methods to visualize bacteria interacting with mucosal tissues, including pioneering a new technique to use human organoids as models for infection. He also co-teaches the medical school microbiology and infectious disease courses using flipped classroom and innovative active-learning techniques. Dr. Amieva grew up in Mexico City and attended Dartmouth College where he was first introduced to the wonders of biology through research using microscopy techniques to study comparative development of marine invertebrates and mammals. He returned to Mexico where he wrote children’s books that told fantastical adventures in science and biology and were recorded as radio plays. He then pursued combined MD and PhD degrees at Stanford University. After Pediatrics residency he obtained subspecialty training in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and postdoctoral training in bacterial pathogenesis. He became a Stanford faculty member in 2004. An avid microscopist, Manuel loves to explore new techniques with his students to visualize, spy on, and film microbes interacting with mucosal tissues.
Manuel Ricardo Amieva, MD, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases
and of Microbiology & Immunology
Stanford University School of Medicine
Dr. Ana María Arbeláez is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Investigator Track) at Washington University in St Louis. In addition, she serves as Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology and Co-Director of ICTS TL1-Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Program. She is a pediatric endocrinologist with a research focus in Diabetes and on both the effects of glycemic extremes and glucose deprivation (hypoglycemia or malnutrition) on brain glucose metabolism and neurodevelopment. She has experience conducting interdisciplinary human studies of glucose counterregulation using neuroimaging methodologies, such as PET and MRI and in the management of multidisciplinary domestic and international research teams. She has been part of multicenter studies such as the TODAY study, Star-3 and DirecNet Study. Dr. Arbeláez’s work has been funded by both federal and non-federal sources, including: the NIH, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Children’s Discovery Institute, The Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, and the Washington University Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. Her work has contributed to our understanding of the effects of diabetes in the brain and the brain-hormone interactions during the cascade of physiological responses that occur across various levels of glycemia and how these are altered in vivo in humans. More recently, she has been leading a multidisciplinary team of national and international investigators funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to determine the effects of malnutrition, a state of chronic glucose deprivation in the developing brain. Aside of her passion for clinical research and patient care, she enjoys fostering child advocacy programs as well as teaching and mentoring trainees.
Ana María Arbeláez, MD, MSCI
Division Director Pediatric Endocrinology
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Washington University in St Louis, USA
Dr. Eric Austin is Director of the Vanderbilt Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Program as well as Director of the Vanderbilt Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (MSCI) Program. He is also Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an attending pulmonologist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. In terms of formal education, Dr. Austin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University Medical School and Vanderbilt MSCI Program. He completed his training in pediatrics at the University of Colorado and pediatric pulmonary medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Dr. Austin is a NIH-funded physician-scientist with a laboratory-based and patient-oriented translational research program that focuses on pulmonary hypertension (PH) in subjects with and without known preexisting disease risks. His group specializes in the design and maintenance of research cohorts and clinical trials in concert with genomic and other basic studies in collaboration with investigators at Vanderbilt and beyond. Dr. Austin is heavily involved in the scholarly development of trainees and junior faculty at Vanderbilt via the MSCI and Office of Clinical and Translational Scientist Development Programs. His extramural leadership and advocacy work includes service positions with the Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and Pulmonary Hypertension Association.
Eric D. Austin, MD MSCI
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Vanderbilt Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Research & Clinical Program
Director, Vanderbilt Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (MSCI) Program
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Dr. Becker is currently the Vice Chair for Faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine and a faculty leader in the Trial Innovation Center and the Pediatric Trials Network at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. She earned her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and pediatric and subspecialty training at the AI duPont Hospital for Children/Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. During fellowship, she obtained a Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Becker completed an additional fellowship in pediatric clinical pharmacology at Children’s Mercy, Kansas City, where she also served as Division Director of Rheumatology and Associate Chair for the Department of Pediatrics, prior to transferring to Duke in 2019. Her research, focused primarily on variability in drug response in JIA, has been funded by the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, the PhRMA Foundation, the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Mara L. Becker, MD, MSCE
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Vice Chair for Faculty
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Rheumatology
Duke University School of Medicine
Duke Clinical Research Institute
Born and raised in Minnesota, Dr. Shaquita Bell is Cherokee on her mother’s side and African-American on her father’s. She completed medical school at the University of Minnesota in 2006. Dr. Bell then went on to pediatric residency at the University of Washington, which she completed in 2009. In 2010 she remained at Seattle Children’s completing a chief residency year becoming the first Native American Chief resident at Seattle Children’s. Dr. Bell is currently a pediatrician at the community health center Odessa Brown. She is the site coordinator for pediatrics residents. Dr. Bell is a Clinical Associate Professor at Seattle Children’s and the University of Washington in the division of General Pediatrics. Additionally, she is the Medical Director of the Center for Diversity and Health Equity at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She is the immediate-past Chair for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Native American Child Health. She runs the Trafficking workgroup at Seattle Children’s Hospital and is a member-at-large on the board of directors for the Association of American Indian Physicians.
Shaquita Bell, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine,
Department of Pediatrics
Medical Director, Center for Diversity and Health Equity, Seattle Children’s Hospital
Attending Pediatrician, Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic
Attending Pediatrician, Harborview Medical Center
Medical Staff President-Elect, Seattle Children’s Hospital
Becky Blankenburg, MD, MPH, is a Clinical Professor and Associate Chair of Education at Stanford and serves as the President of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors. Her educational research interests focus on building a more diverse, inclusive and equitable learning environment and helping learners develop a sense of belonging, professional identity formation, and competence through longitudinal coaching and scholarly mentorship.
Becky Blankenburg, MD, MPH
Clinical Professor
Associate Chair of Education, Pediatrics
Stanford School of Medicine
Dr. Dara Brodsky is a neonatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), an Associate Director of the BIDMC Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Director of Education in the BIDMC Department of Neonatology, and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She has co-authored 4 books to assist trainees and neonatologists with board review: Neonatology Review, Neonatology Review: Images, Neonatology Case-Based Review, and Questions from NeoReviews. She is also co-editor of the textbooks Primary Care of the Premature Infant, Neonatology Review: Q & A and Challenging Cases in Neonatology. She served as an editorial board member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)-sponsored online NeoReviewsPlus and currently is Editor-in-Chief of the AAP-online journal NeoReviews.
Dara Brodsky, MD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Neonatologist, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA
Editor-in-Chief, NeoReviews
Dr. Jeffrey P. Brosco completed an MD and a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as chief resident after training in pediatrics at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, and he is board-certified in Pediatrics and in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics. He continues to teach and practice medicine at the University of Miami; his research focuses on ethics and health policy. With Diane Paul, he is the author The PKU Paradox: A Short History of a Genetic Disease (Johns Hopkins Press, 2013). Dr. Brosco has also served in some capacity in Florida state government for the last 20 years, including as Deputy Secretary of Health, Children’s Medical Services. He is currently Florida’s Title V Director for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs. Dr. Brosco is active in state and national health policy groups, including the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (Department of Health and Human Services) and the National Workgroup on Standards for Systems of Care for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs/National Academy for State Health Policy).
Jeffrey P. Brosco, MD, PhD
Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Director, Population Health Ethics, UM Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy
Director, Title V, Children with Special Health Care Needs, FL Department of Health
Lisa Chamberlain, MD, MPH is Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Chair of Policy and Community in Stanford’s Department of Pediatrics. Her academic focus has been reducing pediatric disparities. As Stanford’s Harman Faculty Scholar she studies the evidence base for “Kinder Ready Clinics”, bridging the early childhood education and pediatric sectors to reduce educational inequity. Her health services research focuses on children with medical complexity, which led her to work Sacramento around Title V reform, increasing access to care for kids in California. She is founder and co-director of the Stanford Pediatric Advocacy Track, a nationally replicated program that trains pediatricians to address child poverty through community and policy engagement, now a national requirement. She co-founded the California Collaborative which trains over 800 pediatricians a year, now modeled in 8 other states. She is the recipient of many national and local awards for her work in the community, including the inaugural Child Advocacy Award in the Department of Pediatrics. A frequent Stanford lecturer, she has been awarded two of its highest teaching awards.
Lisa Chamberlain, MD, MPH
Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford University
Associate Chair, Policy & Community Engagement
Peter Cole, MD is the Embrace Kids Foundation Endowed Chair in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and a tenured Professor of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. His research focuses on improving therapy for children, adolescents, and young adults with cancer and blood disorders. He has led international clinical trials testing novel chemotherapy regimens, and is the Vice Chair of the Children’s Oncology Group’s Hodgkin Disease Committee. His NIH-funded translational research focuses on better understanding, and preventing, the toxicity caused by chemotherapy, with an emphasis on chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment. Dr. Cole is fully committed the academic development of the next generation of innovative clinicians and scientists, with a track record of mentoring students, trainees, and junior faculty who have gone on to successful academic careers.
Peter Cole, MD
Embrace Kids Foundation Endowed Chair and
Chief, Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology
Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ
Professor of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
C. Buddy Creech, MD, MPH, FPIDS is Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. He serves as Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program, Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Vanderbilt Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit, and Co-Principal Investigator of the CDC-sponsored Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network. Dr. Creech’s research interests focus on the development and evaluation of new vaccines and therapeutics, particularly vaccines targeting influenza, pertussis, and S. aureus. His work combines innovative clinical trial design and next-generation immunologic assays to characterize the human response to infection and disease. He is currently leading COVID-related clinical trials at VUMC, including the evaluation of novel treatment options for hospitalized patients with COVID and trials of candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
Dr. Creech received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, cum laude, from Vanderbilt University prior to graduating with high honors from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis, TN. He completed pediatric training at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, serving as Chief Resident in 2002. During fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt, he trained with Dr. Kathryn Edwards and received a master’s degree in public health. He is active in the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), where he serves as President-Elect.
Buddy Creech, MD, MPH
Director, Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program
Associate Professor, Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Medical Center
Dr. Andrew Dauber is currently the Chief of Endocrinology at Children’s National Hospital. Dr. Dauber earned his MD and a Master’s degree in clinical investigation at Harvard Medical School. He completed his pediatrics residency, chief residency, and pediatric endocrinology fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital.
At Boston Children’s Hospital, Dr. Dauber began his research career in the laboratory of Joel Hirschhorn. Dr. Dauber’s work focuses on rare genetic causes of growth disorders and the use of next generation sequencing technologies to understand pediatric endocrine disorders. He has identified numerous genetic etiologies for short stature in addition to discovering that mutations in the MKRN3 and DLK1 genes are responsible for central precocious puberty. After his time in Boston, Dr. Dauber was the inaugural Program Director of The Cincinnati Center for Growth Disorders at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In 2018, Dr. Dauber moved to Washington, DC and assumed his current position of Chief of Endocrinology at Children’s National Hospital. Dr. Dauber is currently leading a clinical trial exploring the use of vosoritide in children with selected genetic causes of short stature.
In acknowledgment of his work, Dr. Dauber has earned multiple awards including young investigator awards from the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the European Society of Pediatric Endocrinology. In addition, he is the recipient of the Richard E. Weitzman Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award from the Endocrine Society.
Andrew Dauber, MD, MMSc
Chief of Endocrinology
Children’s National Hospital
Dr. Jorge Di Paola is a Tenured Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Di Paola’s research focuses on the genetics of bleeding and thrombotic disorders and mechanisms of platelet activation. His laboratory has made discoveries on the genetics of von Willebrand disease and platelet disorders. His laboratory has found disease causing genes for thrombocytopenia disorders as well as cancer predisposition syndromes. These discoveries have set the stage for potential new therapies. Dr. Di Paola has published more than 130 original scientific articles and book chapters. Dr. Di Paola was the Chair of the 2016 Gordon Research Conference in Hemostasis and is the current President of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology (ASPHO). He is a member of the NHLBI Program Project Grant Parent Committee. Dr. Di Paola is an elected member of the class of 2024 of the International Society of thrombosis and Hemostasis (ISTH) Council, the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.
Jorge Di Paola, MD
Professor of Pediatrics & Molecular Genetics and Genomics
Elizabeth Finney McDonnell Endowed Chair in Pediatric Hematology Oncology
Division Chief, Pediatric Hematology Oncology
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
St. Louis Children’s Hospital
Dr. Alexander Fiks is a primary care pediatrician, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and holds a Distinguished Endowed Chair in the Department of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He directs the Possibilities Project, CHOP’s primary care innovation initiative which has overseen multiple initiatives bringing innovation to practice. Board certified in clinical informatics, Dr. Fiks is also an active health services research with a focus on improving outcomes for ambulatory pediatric patients through practice-based research with a focus on improving health and health care decision-making through health information technology. To achieve these goals, much of Dr. Fiks’ research focused on fostering shared decision making between clinicians and families, often in the setting of behavioral health conditions. He is also especially interested in how electronic health record data may best be used to improve primary care, medication use and child health more broadly. With the American Academy of Pediatrics Pediatric Research in Office Settings Network, which he directs, Dr. Fiks co-led the creation of the Collaborative Electronic Reporting for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER2), an electronic health record database designed to support pharmacoepidemiologic and other comparative effectiveness studies that currently includes >2 million US children from across multiple health systems.
Dr. Fiks is also the Director of CHOP’s Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness (CPCE), Medical Director for the Pediatric Research Consortium (PeRC), CHOP’s practice-based research network, and a founding member of the hospital’s Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics.
Alexander Fiks, MD, MSCE
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Distinguished Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Rob Freishtat, MD, MPH, is Chief Biotechnology Officer at Children’s National Hospital and Associate Director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research of the Children’s National Research Institute in Washington, DC, USA. He is a Professor with Tenure in Pediatrics, Emergency Medicine, and Genomics and Precision Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Freishtat’s research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2003. He is the principal investigator for international collaboratives studying intercellular communication in organ injury/repair. He has authored or co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters in the fields of lung injury, asthma, obesity, exosomes and emergency medicine.
Robert Freishtat, MD, MPH
Professor of Pediatrics, George Washington University School of Medicine
and Health Sciences
Emergency Medicine, and Genomics and Precision Medicine
Children’s National Hospital
Dr. Anthony French is a Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology/Immunology, and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St Louis and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology and Immunology. He is also Co-Director of the Pediatric Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at Washington University. Tony grew up on a dairy farm in Minnesota and earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He did his MD and PhD training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where his PhD research was focused on experimental studies and mathematically modeling of endosomal sorting of epidermal growth factor. He subsequently did his pediatric residency at Mayo Clinic and came to Washington University for his fellowship in Pediatric Rheumatology. His research program is focus on the role of NK cells in early innate immune responses, with an emphasis on mechanisms regulating NK cell proliferation and homeostasis during viral infections. He has a particular interest in functional human NK cell defects contributing to usually severe and/or recurrent herpesvirus infections and the contribution of dysregulated NK cell responses to the onset of pediatric autoimmune disorders, such as juvenile dermatomyositis. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Anthony R. French, MD PhD
Professor of Pediatrics, Biomedical Engineering, and Pathology/Immunology
Chief of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology and Immunology
Dr. Debra Friedman is an internationally recognized researcher in cancer prevention, care delivery, control and outcomes across the lifespan and in pediatric and adolescent and young adult oncology. She has led Phase III clinical trials in Hodgkin Lymphoma and Retinoblastoma and cancer survivorship studies in the Children’s Oncology Group, where she is on several disease and discipline steering committees. She is a founding. member of the NCCN Survivorship Panel. She has ongoing research funded by the National Cancer Institute and multiple foundations in cancer prevention, cancer care delivery and health disparities, and outcomes for cancer patients and their families. She is the Program Director for training grants in oncology and has served as a mentor to many fellows and junior faculty seeking to develop research in these areas.
Debra L. Friedman, MD, MS
Professor of Pediatrics
Bronson-Ingram Chair in Pediatric Oncology
Director, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
Associate Director for Community Science and Health Outcomes, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
Stephanie Fritz, MD, MSCI, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Fritz leads a multidisciplinary, translational research team focusing on community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Dr. Fritz has developed an integrated research platform to define the clinical and molecular epidemiology of S. aureus colonization and infection, determine the effectiveness of strategies for treating and preventing infections, and specify mechanisms of S. aureus virulence and host immune responses. Dr. Fritz’s work has been funded by the Infectious Diseases Society of America/National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She is currently the PI of an AHRQ-funded investigation to evaluate the effectiveness of personal and household hygiene measures to interrupt MRSA household transmission and prevent infections.
Dr. Fritz is a member of the NIH/NIAID Antibiotic Resistance Leadership Group Pediatric Special Emphasis Panel and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) Nominations & Awards Committee. Her research accomplishments have been recognized with the PIDS Young Investigator Award and the Washington University Medical Center Alumni Association Resident/Fellow Alumni Achievement Award. Dr. Fritz is also the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Co-Director at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital and is passionate about training the next generation of physician scientists.
Stephanie Fritz, MD, MSCI
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri
Vittorio Gallo, PhD is the Chief Research Officer at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) and holds the Hudson Chair of Pediatrics. He is also the Associate Dean for Child Health Research at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GWUSMHS). He has been Director of the District of Columbia Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (DC-IDDRC) since July 2007. He has also directed a Postdoctoral Training Program in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research since 2006.
Dr. Gallo obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Neurobiology at the University of Rome, Italy, working with Prof. Giulio Levi and the Nobel Laureate Prof. Rita-Levi Montalcini. He did his postdoctoral work at the MRC Developmental Neurobiology Unit, London (EMBO Fellow) – at the Laboratory of Preclinical Pharmacology, NIMH, NIH (Fogarty Fellow) – and in the Department of Pharmacology at University College, London (EMBO Fellow). During his postdoc he studied neuronal development in cerebellum and glutamate receptor channels in astrocytes. In 1989, he became Visiting Scientist and NATO Fellow in the Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology, NICHD, NIH – and then in 1992 Chief of the Section on Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology at NICHD, where he became a tenured investigator in 1995. In 2002, he moved to Children’s National Medical Center to become the Director of the Center for Neuroscience Research, where he built a research center focused on neural development and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Dr. Gallo’s research focuses on neurogenesis and gliogenesis in the postnatal developing brain, and on defining abnormalities that occur in developmental processes that can cause neurodevelopmental disorders. His recent work has expanded into the field of neural stem/progenitor cells and their potential for perinatal brain regeneration and repair. By using different animal models, he has extensively investigated injury in the developing white matter and cerebellum, and uncovered new cellular and molecular mechanisms to promote protection and regeneration. The NIH has funded Dr. Gallo’s research program since he moved to CNH from the NICHD Intramural Research Program. He has received many awards for his research, and in 2018 he was awarded the NINDS Javits Award for his outstanding contributions to neuroscience. Dr. Gallo has served on many NIH review panels and chaired two NIH Study Sections. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, many in high impact international journals (Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Science Translational Medicine, Neuron, Cell Reports, The Journal of Cell Biology, PNAS, The Journal of Neuroscience), and 30 review articles and book chapters (Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience). He has served as Reviewing Editor of The Journal of Neuroscience, and is currently on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Neuroscience.
In his current position as Chief Research Officer and Associated Dean at GWUSMHS, he continues his efforts in promoting pediatric translational research and enhancing integration between lab-based and clinical investigation at the two institutions. He also continues to play a major mentorship role for both faculty and fellows, many of them supported by career development awards. He plays a major role in recruitment of faculty and strongly contributes to the overall research mission of the Children’s Research Institute at CNH with his own program and by training clinical scientists in his own lab. Finally, as Director of the DC-IDDRC, Dr. Gallo has played a leading role in coordinating and integrating scientific efforts between four institutions in the District of Columbia – CNH, GWUSMHS, Howard University, and Georgetown University.
Vittorio Gallo, PhD
Associate Dean for Child Health Research
George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Chief Research Officer, Children’s National Hospital
Scientific Director, Children’s National Research Institute
Dr. Hagood is a physician-scientist with clinical interest in rare and interstitial lung diseases in children, and a laboratory research program which studies lung fibroblast phenotype regulation in the context of lung alveolar development and pulmonary fibrosis, with the objective of developing therapeutic interventions to reverse fibrosis and restore normal lung growth. Dr. Hagood is also interested in optimizing training and mentoring for a diverse cadre of physician scientists and lung biologists, and in promoting support for research in rare lung disease.
James S. Hagood, MD
Professor, Pediatrics (Pulmonology)
Director, Program for Rare and Interstitial Lung Disease
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Anne Hansen received her MD from Harvard Medical School and her MPH from The Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her pediatric residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and her Neonatal Perinatal fellowship at Boston’s Joint Program in Neonatology. She has served as the medical director of the Neonatal ICU at Boston Children’s Hospital since 2003. She serves as the Neonatology Course Directorship for Harvard Medical School students, residents, and international observers. She conducts research in the fields of neonatal neurology, global health, and medical device development and edits several manuals of neonatal medical and surgical care. In her 30 years of practice, research and education as a pediatrician she has sought to improve the care and understanding of critically ill newborns at home and around the world.
Anne Hansen, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Pediatrics | Harvard Medical School
Associate Chief, Newborn Medicine
Medical Director, NICU | Boston Children’s Hospital
Barry Family Research Chair in Newborn Medicine
Jacqueline Ho, MD, MSc, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Nephrology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She earned her medical degree at the University of Western Ontario (Canada). She trained in pediatrics at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, University of British Columbia (Canada) and subsequently in pediatric nephrology at Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School.
The leading cause of chronic kidney disease and renal failure in children is abnormal development of the kidney and urinary tract. Thus, her research program is focused on understanding the role of microRNAs in kidney development and disease. Her laboratory has recently shown that microRNAs are involved in regulating the proliferation and survival of nephron progenitors in the developing kidney, which has important implications for congenital nephron endowment and subsequent kidney health in children and adults.
Jacqueline Ho, MD, MSc
Associate Professor, Pediatrics
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Division of Pediatric Nephrology
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
Audrey Odom John, MD, PhD, is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. John’s NIH-funded research has focused on Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites, with a particular interest in targeting parasite metabolism to identify novel targets for drug development and noninvasive approaches to diagnosis. Dr. John is an Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases of the Burroughs Welcome Fund. She has received numerous accolades, including awards from the American Chemical Society, March of Dimes, and the inaugural IDea Incubator Grand Prize from the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Audrey Odom John, MD, PhD
Stanley Plotkin Endowed Chair in Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Chief, Infectious Diseases
Department of Pediatrics
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Prince J. Kannankeril, MD, MSCI, is a clinical pediatric cardiologist/electrophysiologist with formal training in clinical/translational research. His research program investigates genetic variants and their contribution to cardiovascular disease and clinical outcomes (Personalized Medicine). He is Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology), with faculty appointments in both the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute (VGI) and the Vanderbilt Center for Arrhythmia Research and Therapeutics (VanCART) and serves as Director of Clinical/Translational Research for the Division of Pediatric Cardiology at Vanderbilt.
Prince J. Kannankeril, MD, MSCI
Professor of Pediatrics, Pediatric Cardiology
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Dr. Wendy Landier is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology, and the Deputy Director of the Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship in the School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham. She earned her Master’s Degree at UCLA and PhD from the University of Hawaii. She is a pediatric nurse practitioner with a clinical focus on the care of childhood cancer survivors. She was integrally involved in the development of the Children’s Oncology Group Long-Term Follow-Up Guidelines and continues to provide oversight over guideline refinement as co-chair of the COG Core Guidelines Committee. Her research focuses on understanding and improving health outcomes in childhood cancer survivors, with an emphasis on secondary cancer prevention; development, implementation, and refinement of guidelines for survivorship care; ototoxicity related to childhood cancer treatment; and acquisition of health knowledge by childhood cancer survivors and their parents/caregivers.
Wendy Landier, PhD, CRNP, FAAN
Professor, Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Keith J. Mann, MD, MEd, is the Vice President of Continuing Certification at the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP). He is certified in general pediatrics and is meeting the requirements of maintenance of certification. Dr. Mann graduated from New Jersey Medical School in Newark, N.J. He completed his Internal Medicine / Pediatric residency in Wilmington, DE and Philadelphia, PA and was Chief Resident, Pediatrics at Thomas Jefferson University/AI DuPont Hospital for Children. He completed additional Quality Improvement training at the Harvard School for Public Health and Intermountain Healthcare and earned a Master’s degree in Education from University of Cincinnati. In his role as Vice President of Continuing Certification, Keith is responsible for leading the continued development and implementation of the ABP’s continuing certification program (also known as maintenance of certification, or MOC). He is also focused on engaging pediatricians both in contributing to the future continuing certification program and improving the communication about recent changes. He provides expertise in lean methodology, patient and family centered care, education, health care quality and patient safety. Prior to joining the ABP, he served on the MOC Committee of the ABP for 5 years and chaired the committee for 3 years.
Prior to joining the ABP, Keith was the Vice President and Chief Medical Quality and Safety Officer at Children’s Mercy Kansas City in Kansas City, MO and a Professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. In his 10 years leading Quality and Safety at Children’s Mercy Hospital, he built a Quality Improvement training program that trained over 300 faculty and staff in improvement science and over 1000 faculty and staff in introductory traditional quality improvement and lean methods. He published the results of the project-based improvement training program in Pediatric Quality and Safety in 2019. As a component of the educational program, he mentored countless fellows and faculty members through successful quality improvement projects, resulting in publications on topics ranging from improved efficiency in an echocardiography lab to improved oral health care in a primary care clinic. He also led efforts to markedly reduce the hospitals serious safety event and total preventable harm rate and led the development of their disclosure program. He contributed his expertise in disclosing events in the Ethics Rounds section of Pediatrics in 2015.
Prior to leading quality and safety efforts at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Keith started his career as a clinician educator. He was the Associate Residency Program Director at AI duPont Hospital for Children / Thomas Jefferson University and at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics / UMKC School of Medicine. He became actively involved in the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD) early in his career and developed the Grassroots Forum for Associate Program Directors in 2007 and co-chaired the group for 3 years. During that time, he became the first Associate Program Director to co-chair the APPD Annual Meeting (2009 – 2011) and co-developed the first peer mentorship program for the APPD and co-chaired the APPD Mentoring Program (2009-2011). This work is published in Academic Pediatrics (2010). Facilitated Peer Group Mentoring: A Case Study of Creating Leadership Skills Among the Associate Program Directors of the APPD.
Keith J. Mann, MD, MEd
Vice President, Continuing Certification
American Board of Pediatrics
Adjunct Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Duke University School of Medicine
First and foremost, Dr. Rebekah Mannix is a pediatric emergency medicine physician. Dr. Mannix’s research is informed by her clinical experiences treating children with traumatic injuries, with an emphasis on traumatic brain injury (TBI). Dr. Mannix’s TBI research platform spans from preclinical TBI models aimed at discovering new therapeutics, large database studies investigating trends in management, to clinical trials such as exercise as a treatment for concussion. Dr. Mannix’s research has been published in a wide range of journals including Nature, JAMA, NEJM, Science Advances, Annals of Neurology, and Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Rebekah Mannix, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Senior Associate, Boston Children’s Hospital
Bradley S. Marino, MD, MPP, MSCE, MBA is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. He is the Chair of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology and the Executive Co-Director of the Pediatric and Adult Congenital Heart Center at Cleveland Clinic Children’s. Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic Children’s he was a Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Social Sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Marino was the creator and Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Innovation in the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (Lurie Children’s). He served on the Willis J. Potts Heart Center Executive Committee and as the Associate Division Head of Research in the Division of Cardiology at Lurie Children’s. He led the long-term neurodevelopmental follow-up for children with complex congenital heart disease and high-risk NICU graduates at Lurie Children’s and served as the Co-Director of the NICU-Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program. While at Lurie Children’s he served for 2 years as the Director of the Regenstein Cardiac Care Unit and Director of Inpatient Cardiology. At Northwestern University he served on the steering committee for the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci) and as the Co-Director of the DevSci Neurodevelopmental Core. At Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, he served on the Clinical Research Council, and as a member of the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute Internal Advisory Committee and the NUCATS Institute KL2 Executive Committee.
Dr. Marino earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a Master’s degree in Public Policy in Health Care Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He completed his pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a combined fellowship in Pediatric Cardiology and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. While at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Marino completed a Master’s of Science degree in Clinical Epidemiology at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. He completed a Master’s degree in Business Administration in Healthcare Management at the University of Texas-Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Dr. Marino is an internationally recognized pediatric cardiovascular outcomes researcher. Dr. Marino’s research interests have focused on the impact of surgical and intensive care unit factors on mortality and morbidity, as well as, the impact of neurodevelopmental, psychosocial, and physical morbidities on quality of life, functional status, and behavioral and emotional outcomes in the high-risk complex congenital heart disease population. He is also pursuing novel investigations on the impact of neurodevelopmental health on cardiovascular health in the young. Dr. Marino’s scientific work has been supported through more than 2 dozen grants as a Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator from the National Institute of Health through NHLBI (RO1, R13, R34, R43, R44 SBIR, K23, UO1), NICHD (U24), the American Heart Association (AHA) (Strategically Focused Research Network for Children), the Children’s Heart Foundation, other national foundations, and internal grants. He has published more than 160 peer-review publications and written or edited more than a dozen books and 70 book chapters on pediatric cardiology, pediatric cardiac intensive care, and general pediatric medicine. He has been invited for 40 Visiting Professorships and given more than 160 international and national lectures based on his scientific inquiry.
Dr. Marino is an international leader and advocate for children with congenital and acquired heart disease. He has served as the American Heart Association Chair of the Young Hearts Council (Council on Lifelong Congenital Heart Disease and Heart Health in the Young), President of the AHA Chicago Metropolitan Board, inaugural Co-Chair for the international Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative, and the inaugural Chair of the Medical Advisory Board for Conquering Congenital Heart Disease, He has also served as a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Executive Committee, Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society Board of Directors, and Cardiac Networks United Steering Committee. He currently serves as a member of the AHA National Council Operations Committee and steering committee for the Congenital Heart Public Health Consortium. He is a Scholar in the 9th cohort of the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs Pediatric Leadership Development Program. Dr. Marino was recently elected to the American Pediatric Society and Feinberg Academy of Medical Educators at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Marino has been awarded the Pediatric Congenital Heart Association Heart Hero Award, Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative Newburger-Bellinger Award, Congenital Heart Foundation Congenital Heart Defect Champion Award, and the Heart Institute Peter B. Manning Educational Award at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Bradley S. Marino, MD, MPP, MSCE, MBA
Professor of Pediatrics
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University
Ronald and Helen Ross Chair in Pediatric Cardiology
Chair, Department of Pediatric Cardiology
Executive Co-Director Pediatric and Adult Congenital Heart Center
Camilia R. Martin MD, MS, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and the Associate Director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Director for Cross-Disciplinary Research Partnerships in the Division of Translational Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Boston, MA.
Dr. Martin received her M.D. from Cornell University School of Medicine and completed her internship and residency at Children’s Memorial Hospital/Northwestern School of Medicine where she also served as Chief Pediatric Resident. Dr. Martin completed her fellowship in Perinatal-Neonatal Medicine at the Harvard Combined Program in Neonatology. During her fellowship training, she completed a Masters in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Martin’s research interests are focused in neonatal nutrition and its impact on health and disease in the preterm infant. She has participated in multi-site clinical trials serving as the Principal Investigator at BIDMC evaluating growth and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes in the extremely preterm infant. Her current basic and clinical translational research interests are in the interplay between lipids, fatty acid metabolism, and postnatal intestinal and pulmonary development.
Camilia R. Martin, MD, MS
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Asunción Mejías received her medical and PhD degrees with suma cum laude from Universidad de Málaga, Spain, and completed her fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and a Master in Clinical Science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the United States. In 2009 she joined the Division of Infectious Diseases at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where she is Principal Investigator for the Center for Vaccines and Immunity. She is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics with tenure at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Dr. Mejías’ research focuses on airway and respiratory viral diseases, and she has been recognized with several awards for her research, specifically those pertaining to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. Recently, she was awarded by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society with the 2015 Caroline B. Hall Clinically Innovative Research Award.
Dr. Mejías is a member of several professional organizations, including the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Society for Microbiology, the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society and the European Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases. In addition, she serves as external reviewer for different national and international organizations as well as a reviewer for multiple peer-reviewed medical journals. She has contributed with more than 200 publications including original articles, reviews, editorials and book chapters.
Asunción Mejías, MD, PhD, MsCS
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Michael Stephen Meyn, MD, PhD earned his undergraduate degree cum laude at Princeton University and received his MD degree and a PhD in Basic Medical Sciences from New York University. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and then fellowships in Medical Genetics at the National Institutes of Health. He was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics at Yale University from 1987-1998. In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of Paediatrics and Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. He served as the Head of the Program in Genetics and Genome Biology at the Hospital for Sick Children from 2007 to 2013. In 2017 Dr. Meyn was recruited to UW-Madison where he is the Jan and Kathryn Ver Hagen Professor of Translational Research (Pediatrics) and the inaugural Director of the Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine.
Dr. Meyn’s work encompasses the full range of genetics research – from fundamental studies of DNA repair and telomere biology to evaluations of the clinical applications of whole genome sequencing and the ethics of predictive genetic testing. He has served as principal investigator for numerous basic and clinical research studies, funded by agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada). He has authored over 85 articles, reviews and book chapters and has been a Fulbright Distinguished Senior Scholar. Dr. Meyn has served on grant review committees for national and international research organizations and was a long-standing member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund. While in Toronto, Dr. Meyn co-led the Hospital for Sick Children’s Cancer Genetics Program and Genome Clinic Project, which pioneered the use of diagnostic and predictive whole genome sequencing in children. His current research focuses on two of the major challenges in genomic medicine: discovering new disease genes and developing high-throughput methods for rapidly identifying pathogenic genomic variants.
Michael Stephen Meyn, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine
Professor of Molecular Genetics and Pediatrics
University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine
Isabelle Meyts, MD, PhD, obtained her medical degree at the University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1999. In 2007 she obtained her license in Pediatrics as well as her PhD degree with a work studying the role of Th subsets in allergic airway inflammation in a mouse model of asthma. At the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, within the Department of Pediatrics, she built the Pediatric Primary Immunodeficiency Unit where she is responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of children affected by primary immunodeficiency. She is also responsible for the Care Program in Primary Immunodeficiencies. She has built expertise in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for primary immunodeficiency and is licensed as a pediatric hemato-oncologists. Her efforts led to the recognition of the Department of Primary Immunodeficiencies as a Jeffrey Modell Foundation Diagnostics and Research Center in 2011 and to an Edelweiss Award for Multidisciplinary Care by the Rare Diseases Organization. She is Professor at the University of Leuven where she established the Laboratory for Inborn Errors of Immunity. She conducts research that is centered on the genetic and functional unraveling of inborn errors of immunity. In 2020 she obtained a European Research Council Start Grant with a project focusing on adenosine deaminase type 2 deficiency (MORE2ADA2). She is the current President of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies.
Isabelle Meyts, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics and
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
University of Leuven
Cynthia Mollen, MD, MSCE, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, the Chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a practicing pediatric emergency medicine physician. I obtained my MD at Weill Cornell Medical College, and completed both my pediatrics residency and pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In addition, I completed the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology during my fellowship. I am a founding member of PolicyLab at CHOP, a cross-disciplinary research and policy center focused on improving children’s health, and my research career has focused on using non-traditional setting as sites for interventions to improve adolescent reproductive health. I founded and oversee a research program in Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Emergency Department that provides sexual health education and HIV testing services, and explores intervention opportunities for increasing access to reproductive health services in the ED. In addition, I have expertise in qualitative research methodology, and have utilized these skills on many projects in different topics in pediatrics, including caring for medically complex children in the emergency setting, experiences of patients and families in palliative care, and the intersection of the child welfare and educational systems.
Cynthia Mollen, MD, MSCE
Chief, Division of Emergency Medicine
Investigator, PolicyLab
Dr. Yael P. Mossé is a tenured Associate Professor at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Her clinical and research specialty is neuroblastoma, a cancer that starts in the nerve tissues of infants and young children. She received her M.D. from the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1997, joining the Children’s Hospital residency program that year, followed by fellowship training at the same hospital starting in 2000. She trained in the laboratory of John Maris, MD and now has her own independent NIH-funded research program where she investigates the hereditary predisposition and progression of neuroblastoma with a focus on drug development. She garnered international attention for her discovery of germline and somatic mutations in the ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) gene that occur in some neuroblastomas. Changes, or mutations, in the ALK gene play a role in the growth of cancer cells and has also been linked to lung cancer and lymphoma. Her group has directed the efforts to develop the portfolio of nonclinical and clinical data required to obtain FDA breakthrough designation of this very first ALK inhibitor for children with relapsed Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (May 2018). The discovery that activating mutations in the ALK oncogene are the major cause of hereditary neuroblastoma, and that somatically acquired mutations and amplification events often drive the malignant process in a subset of sporadic tumors, has positioned ALK as the major tractable oncogene product for targeted therapy in newly diagnosed neuroblastoma patients. ALK inhibition therapy has now moved upfront in the currently enrolling COG Phase 3 clinical trial for patients with newly diagnosed high-risk neuroblastoma (ANBL1531). In parallel, her lab is developing newer and more precise strategies for targeting ALK as we learn from patients about de novo and acquired resistance, including the development of immunotherapeutic strategies to target cell surface ALK, which is expressed on neuroblastomas and other childhood and adult cancer.
Yael P Mossé, MD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Patricia Brophy Endowed Chair in Neuroblastoma Research
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Dr. Elijah Paintsil is a Professor of Pediatrics, of Pharmacology, of Epidemiology and of Management. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Society for Pediatric Research, and Academic Pediatric Society and a consultant to Africa CDC. He completed medical school in his native Ghana, residency at Lincoln Hospital in NYC and fellowship training in pediatric infectious disease at Yale. He arrived at Yale with no background in research. Dr. Paintsil is both a laboratory-based and a clinical investigator with a major interest in understanding the determinants of individual differences in response to antiretroviral therapy (ART) (e.g., virologic response and clinical toxicities of antiretroviral drugs). He received an NIH career development award (K08) from 2008 to 2013 and then seamlessly transitioned to an R01 award. Dr. Paintsil devotes significant professional effort to training and capacity building. During his 15 years on the faculty at Yale, Dr. Paintsil has mentored over 32 trainees at the undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and post-doctoral levels and junior faculty. Trainees from his lab have received numerous awards for individual research accomplishments, including prizes awarded by the Yale Schools of Medicine and of Public Health, as well as with national awards from the Academic Pediatric Association. Work of one of the trainees resulted in issuance of US Patent (No. 62/007,121: Plasma Cytochrome C as a Biomarker for Mitochondrial Toxicity During Antiretroviral Therapy). He served as the co-Chair of the Pediatric Department Faculty Mentoring Program.
In 2006, Dr. Paintsil established a bi-directional research and training initiative with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the U. of Ghana (Ghana-Yale Partnership for Global Health). In addition to supporting collaborative research between faculty, the program sponsors up to12-month periods of closely mentored research training in New Haven and in Accra for students/fellows from both institutions. Based on the success of the Yale-Ghana collaboration, the program was expanded in 2009 to include additional partner institutions, the U. of Sao Paolo (Brazil) and King Saud U. (Saudi Arabia) and, in 2014, the U. of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. These five universities comprise a global consortium dedicated to collaborative research and training in infectious diseases. He is the PI of a D43 grant (06/15/20 to 12/31/24) from Fogarty titled “HIV Comorbidities Research Training (HIV-ComRT) in Ghana, which builds and expands on his ongoing successful short-term summer intensive mentored-research training in New Haven. He also the PI of an R01 to study the benefits of pediatric HIV disclosure in Ghana (R01 HD103512-01, 8/15/20 to 6/30/25).
Before migrating to the U.S., he had extensive experience in both leadership and management in Ghana, where he was the District Director of Health Services in charge of policy, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of health services delivery in three hospitals and 18 health centers. Since joining Yale faculty, he has distinguished himself as a leader and mentor. He was the Acting Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases from 2016 to 2019 and was appointed the substantive chief in 2019. He is also the Program Director (2016 to present) of the Pediatric Fellowship Training Program and the PI of T32 training grant (2T32AI007210-36) aimed at training physician scientists. His career goal is to help establish and promote global pediatric academic medicine within institutions in the US and abroad. Tackling diseases in children and adolescent globally will require collaborations among pediatric academic centers worldwide.
Elijah Paintsil, MD, FAAP
Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases), Pharmacology, Public Health & Management
Chief, Section of Pediatric Infectious Diseases & Global Health
Director, Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program
Yale School of Medicine, New Haven
Dr. Mohan Pammi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. He attended medical school at Madras Medical College, India, following which he completed his pediatric residency at G.M. Seth Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, India. He then went on to train in the United Kingdom where he obtained the Membership of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, London. During this time, Dr. Pammi worked with leading personalities in the field of Neonatology and trained in premier institutes such as St. George’s Hospital, London. He spent a year at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, at Oxford, United Kingdom, coordinating an international clinical trial of intravenous immunoglobulins in neonatal sepsis. He cemented his training in Neonatology by completing a fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine and currently continues as faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Pammi completed a PhD in the Clinical Scientist Training Program at Baylor College of Medicine in 2014.
Dr. Pammi has established a national and international reputation as an expert on neonatal infections and the microbiome. He has always been interested in infections that afflict the smallest of preterm infants. In addition, he is passionate and devoted to evidence-based practice. He serves as the Associate Editor for the Cochrane Neonatal. The mission of the Cochrane Collaboration is to promote evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesized research evidence. The work of the Cochrane Collaboration is internationally recognized as the benchmark for high-quality information about the effectiveness of health care. He has performed more than 15 reviews for the Cochrane collaboration, mostly related to infections and infective therapies in the newborn. His expertise in clinical research is known nationally and internationally and has been the site principal investigator for international and national multi-center trials.
Dr. Pammi has distinguished himself as an educator at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. He has received Fulbright awards for educational excellence in teaching and creation of enduring educational materials. He directs the ‘Evidence Academy’ which fosters collaboration between different specialties at Texas Children’s Hospital including Critical Care Medicine and Pediatric Hospitalists, in developing resources and workshops to foster evidence-based practice. Mohan has developed a needs-based curriculum in Evidence Based Medicine in Neonatology and has taught the course to Fellows and Faculty in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. He has developed and conducted Systematic Review workshops at Texas Children’s Hospital which were well attended and evaluated. He also directs BEME international collaborating center at the Texas Children’s Hospital, which works with BEME (best evidence in medical education, beme.org, an international organization) in fostering evidence base in educational interventions.
Mohan Pammi MD, PhD, MRCPCH
Associate Professor
Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital
Dr. Anna Penn is a clinical neonatologist and developmental neuroscientist. She does translational research aimed at understanding and ameliorating preterm brain injury. Her current work examines the influence of the placenta on fetal brain development, a research area for which she coined the term “neuroplacentology”. She also studies sex differences in perinatal brain injury and neuroprotection. She currently leads Neonatology at Columbia and previously held faculty positions at George Washington University School of Medicine/Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. and at Stanford University. She received an AB from Harvard-Radcliffe College and her MD and PhD degrees from Stanford. She completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco and a fellowship in neonatology at Stanford University. Dr. Penn is a past recipient of a National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award and maintains a NIH grant-funded research laboratory. She also served as the director of membership for the Society of Pediatric Research for six years, working to support and improve the pipeline for physician-scientists.
Anna Penn, MD, PhD
Stanley James Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Chief, Division of Neonatology
Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University
NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
Eliana M. Perrin, MD, MPH, is a tenured Professor of Pediatrics, the Division Chief of Primary Care, the Director of the Duke Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Duke University, and a Program Director of the National Clinician Scholars Program at Duke. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College, the University of Rochester School of Medicine (with AOA honors), and Stanford Pediatrics residency. She completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and got her MPH also from UNC-CH. She was on the faculty of UNC for over 16 years in the Department of Pediatrics and also served as one of UNC’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Research helping to build interdisciplinary research teams and overseeing the university’s post-doctoral program. She transitioned to Duke University 4 years ago. Her area of research expertise is patient-oriented preventive care, health disparities, and health services research, especially the prevention and treatment of pediatric obesity. She has been the lead on numerous grants (including a multi-site randomized controlled trial NIH R01 and its renewal) on obesity and children’s health. She is now a co-Principal Investigator on a 6-site PCORI funded comparative effectiveness randomized controlled trial of obesity prevention. She currently is the national chair for the Academic Pediatrics Association Research Committee.
Eliana M. Perrin, MD, MPH
Professor of Pediatrics
Division Chief, Primary Care Pediatrics
Director, Duke Center for Childhood Obesity Research
Program Director, National Clinical Scholars Program at Duke
Catherine Pihoker, MD, is chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes and attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Her clinical focus is inpatient and outpatient attending for endocrinology and diabetes. Her main research interests include investigating factors that predict the clinical course of diabetes, diabetes typology and improving outcomes of children with diabetes.
Dr. Pihoker is also interested in the impact on children of being overweight and living sedentary lifestyles, and she is involved in proposals studying the quality of life and metabolic measures in the general population as well as in cancer survivors. Other research interests include endocrine dysfunction in childhood cancer survivors and hypothalamic-pituitary function in children with tumors in the pituitary region. The studies Pihoker has been involved with include the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth, TrialNet and the Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium. Her teaching activities include serving as fellowship director, and didactic and direct teaching of resident physicians, medical students and support staff.
Catherine Pihoker, MD
Division Chief, Endocrinology and Diabetes
Seattle Children’s Hospital
Professor, Department of Pediatrics
University of Washington School of Medicine
Dr. Tara M. Randis is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Medicine at the University of South Florida and Chief of the Division of Neonatology. She is a graduate of the University of Scranton and received her MD from Drexel University School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency training at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children before pursing her fellowship training in neonatal-perinatal medicine at Columbia University. In 2011, she earned a MS degree in biostatistics from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her laboratory team focuses on the mechanisms of bacterial colonization of the female reproductive tract as it relates to adverse pregnancy outcomes including chorioamnionitis, preterm labor and early-onset neonatal sepsis. She is an active member of the Society for Pediatric Research and The Perinatal Research Society.
Tara M. Randis, MD, MS
The Pamela and Leslie Muma Endowed Chair
Associate Professor and Chief, Division of Neonatology
Departments of Pediatrics and Molecular Medicine
Sonja Rasmussen, MD, MS is Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Epidemiology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine and College of Public Health and Health Professions where she serves as Director of UF’s Precision Health Program, which focuses on integration of genomics into clinical care. Dr. Rasmussen joined UF in 2018 after 20 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, where she held several scientific leadership roles. In her recent roles as a public health leader, she served as Deputy Director of the Influenza Coordination Unit, responsible for CDC’s pandemic influenza preparedness and response activities, and led CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, an office with a $1.3 billion annual budget and >900 staff members, as Acting Director during the 2014 Ebola response. She also served as Editor-in-Chief of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Series, the most highly cited journal in the field of epidemiology. Dr. Rasmussen was lead author of the paper confirming Zika virus as a cause of birth defects, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016. She served in leadership roles during several CDC responses to public health emergencies, including 2009 H1N1 influenza, H7N9 influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Zika virus. She recently participated in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee to develop a framework for equitable allocation of vaccines for COVID-19. She is an author on >240 peer-reviewed publications and is the lead editor of The CDC Field Epidemiology Manual, released by Oxford University Press in 2019.
Dr. Rasmussen received her BS in Biology and Mathematics with magna cum laude honors from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, her MS degree in Medical Genetics from the University of Wisconsin, and her MD degree with honors from University of Florida. She completed her pediatrics residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and her fellowship in clinical genetics at Johns Hopkins and University of Florida.
Sonja Rasmussen, MD, MS
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Epidemiology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology University of Florida College of Medicine & College of Public Health and Health Professions, Gainesville, Florida
Dr. Jennifer Raymond is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. She is the Division Chief in Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes Director, and Chair of the Virtual Care Committee at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). She received her medical degree and completed her residency in Pediatrics at the University of Kansas. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology and Master of Clinical Research at Oregon Health and Science University.
Dr. Raymond’s main research and clinical interest is improving patient outcomes through novel clinical approaches and behavioral interventions, specifically in at-risk adolescents and young adults. She also has a particular interest and expertise in utilizing telehealth to increase the reach of clinical and behavioral interventions. Dr. Raymond is interested in generalizable, sustainable, and efficient clinical care models that can be replicated in multiple care settings, including in racially, ethically, and socioeconomically diverse young people.
Jennifer Raymond, MD, MCR
Division Chief, Clinical Director of Diabetes
Center for Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism
Chair of the Virtual Care Committee
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
Ranna A. Rozenfeld, MD, FAAP, FCCM, is Professor of Pediatrics at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Dr. Rozenfeld specializes in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. She is the Medical Director of the LifePACT Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team at Rhode Island Hospital/Hasbro Children’s Hospital and is the Associate Division Director for Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. She is actively involved in teaching, research and clinical care.
Dr. Rozenfeld received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MD from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency at the University of Chicago and her pediatric critical care medicine fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Dr. Rozenfeld was a member of the faculty at Lurie Children’s Hospital/Northwestern University for 23 years before moving to Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Brown University in 2017.
Dr. Rozenfeld’s academic and research interests include transport medicine, sepsis and septic shock, extracorporeal life support, as well as medical education. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Transport Medicine. In addition to the American Pediatric Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, she is also a member of the Society for Pediatric Research, the Air Medical Physician Association, the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Rozenfeld was awarded the 2017 Excellence in Transport Leadership Award by the Association of Air Medical Services.
Ranna A. Rozenfeld, MD, FAAP, FCCM
Professor of Pediatrics, The Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University
Associate Division Director, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine
Medical Director, LifePACT Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team
Dr. David Schnadower’s main research interest is in improving the diagnosis and management of young children presenting with infectious diseases to the emergency department, particularly UTIs, viral gastroenteritis, bloody diarrhea caused by STEC as well as understanding the role of gut microbiome in young infants with serious bacterial infections. Dr. Schnadower has led and participated numerous multicenter studies and received T32, R34 and RO1 level funding for his work. He has contributed to practice changing publications in high impact journals, including the NEJM, JAMA, the J Allergy Clin Immunol and Pediatrics. Dr. Schnadower has held leadership positions in prominent academic departments and medical centers as well as in national committees and multicenter networks.
David Schnadower, MD, MPH
Professor of Pediatrics, UC Department of Pediatrics
Richard and Barbara Ruddy Endowed Chair in Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research
Academic Director, Division of Emergency Medicine
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Richard Shugerman, MD is the Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs and the Pediatric WWAMI Director for the University of Washington School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. He is a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Richard received his medical degree from the University of Alabama in Birmingham School of Medicine and completed his residency in pediatrics at the University of Washington. He received the Parker J. Palmer “Courage to Teach” Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 2007, the Robert Holm Award for leadership in residency education from the Association of Pediatric Program Directors in 2009 and the Bruce Gilliland Award for excellence in teaching of residents and fellows from the University of Washington in 2013. He currently serves as a faculty member for the Association of Pediatric Program Director’s LEAD (Leadership in Educational Academic Development) Program.
Richard P. Shugerman, MD
Vice Chair, Faculty Development
Director, Pediatric WWAMI
Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Seattle Children’s Hospital/University of Washington
Clinical Focus
- Gastroenterology/Nutrition/Hepatology, Pediatric
- Pediatric Gastroenterology
Academic Appointments
- Professor, Pediatrics – Gastroenterology
- Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Administrative Appointments
- Faculty Senator, Stanford University (2019 – 2021)
- Associate Chair for Academic Affairs, Department of Pediatrics (2016 – Present)
- Co-Director, Stanford Gastroenterology NIH T32 Training Program (2011 – Present)
- Assistant Dean for Academic Advising, Stanford University School of Medicine (2012 – Present)
- Director, Junior Faculty Mentoring Program, North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition (2016 – Present)
- All Administrative Appointments (12)
Honors & Awards
- Distinguished Service Award, North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition (2017)
- Member, American Clinical and Climatological Association (2010-present)
- Council, elected, American Gastroenterology Association (2007-2011)
- Council, elected, Society for Pediatric Research (2005-2008)
- Named Investigator Award, Stanford Digestive Disease Center (2002-2003)
- Young Faculty Investigator Award, North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (1998)
Professional Education
- Fellowship: Stanford University School of Medicine (1996) CA
- Residency: Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Pediatric Residency (1993) CA
- Internship: Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Pediatric Residency (1991) CA
- Undergraduate Education, Harvard College, A.B., Biochemical Sciences (1982)
- Medical Education: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1990) MD
- Graduate Education, Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., Biological Chemistry (1990)
Eric Sibley, MD, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics (Gastroenterology)
The Bernard A. Newcomb Distinguished Packard Fellow
Assistant Dean for Academic Advising
Associate Chair for Academic Affairs, Department of Pediatrics
Stanford University School of Medicine
Brian Sims, MD, PhD, is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics. Originally from Birmingham, Dr. Sims received his B.S. from UAB in Biology. He earned an M.D. and Ph.D. in Cell Biology at University of Alabama School of Medicine in 2000 before moving to Washington University-St. Louis for his Pediatric residency. While there he was one of the first in the country accepted into the American Academy of Pediatrics-Pediatric Research Pathway and did a postdoctoral fellowship in Anatomy and Neurobiology studying embryonic stem cells. He completed residency training in 2003 and decided to return to UAB for his Neonatology training. He was appointed as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology at UAB in 2006. He is a recipient of the 2010 UAB President’s Award for Diversity and the 2013 UAB Graduate School Dean’s Award for Mentoring. In 2014, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Pediatrics. He has an active research lab investigating the cellular pathways of neuroprotection. He recently was awarded the 2020 UAB Department of Pediatrics Diversity and Inclusion Award. Dr. Sims is an active member in the community
Brian Sims, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Neurobiology and Cell,
Integrative and Developmental Biology
UAB Division of Neonatology
Department of Pediatrics
Dr. Brian Smith completed a residency in pediatrics and fellowship in neonatal medicine at Duke University Medical Center in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He obtained a MHS in Clinical Research from Duke University in 2006 and MPH in Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. Dr. Smith served as a Senior Pediatric Consultant in the Office of Pediatric Therapeutics at the FDA from 2006-2010. He is the author of >300 peer-reviewed publications, most in the areas of pediatric pharmacology, drug safety, and outcomes research.
For 10 years, Dr. Smith led a collaboration with the Pediatrix Medical Group using data from a prospective cohort generated from electronic medical records at 300 neonatal intensive care units. The Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) serves as the research data repository for this effort resulting in over 80 publications. From 2010-16, Dr. Smith served as a steering committee member and lead the Duke Clinical Research Institute’s (DCRI) coordinating center operations of the NICHD-funded Pediatric Trials Network (PTN) tasked with evaluating the safety and dosing of off-patent drugs and devices in children under the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act. Dr. Smith is currently PI for the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Coordinating Center at DCRI which oversees the ECHO program including 70 existing pediatric cohorts.
Brian Smith, MD, MPH, MHS
Samuel L. Katz Professor of Pediatrics
Duke University School of Medicine
Dr. Sola-Visner was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Her father was in the Ecuadorian Navy, so the family moved frequently and lived in places as diverse as the Galapagos Islands and Germany. Dr. Sola-Visner obtained her medical degree at the Santiago de Guayaquil Catholic University in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and then moved to the U.S. for further training. She completed pediatric residency and neonatology fellowship in 2000 at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, FL, where she trained in neonatal hematology under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Christensen and stayed as faculty for a few years. She has been at Boston Children’s Hospital since 2007, where she now serves as Director of the Newborn Medicine Clinical Research Program. Her research has focused on neonatal megakaryocyte and platelet biology, thrombocytopenia, and neonatal platelet transfusions.
Martha Sola-Visner, MD
Attending Neonatologist
Boston Children’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Harvard Medical School
Dr. David Teachey is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He has dedicated his career to the investigation of childhood malignant and non-malignant disorders of lymphoid cells. His primary area of research is in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with focus on subtypes of ALL with poor outcome. He studies novel therapies in his laboratory using preclinical models and has translated many of those therapies into the clinic. He is the PI on multiple local, national, and international ALL clinical trials and often performs the correlative studies for those trials in his lab. He is a member of the ALL Executive Disease Committee in the Children’s Oncology Group and is Chair of ALL biology. Dr. Teachey also studies immune dysregulation and lymphoproliferative disorders. He discovered that mTOR signaling is dysregulated in ALPS and that targeting mTOR with sirolimus is an effective therapy. Sirolimus is now the standard of care treatment for ALPS, transforming the prognosis for this rare disease. His interest in immune dysregulation has impacted ALL through investigation of the biology of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) after chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy. He made the initial observation that CRS clinically resembles hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) and confirmed this in the lab. Moreover, he helped suggest the use of the IL6-receptor inhibitor tocilizumab for the treatment CRS after CAR T cell therapy after the first child treated became critically ill, based on the use of this class of agents for lymphoproliferative disorders. Tocilizumab was recently FDA approved for this indication. Dr. Teachey’s laboratory has been continuously grant funded since he was a trainee, including funding by the NIH and multiple foundations including Cures Within Reach, the American Cancer Society, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He is a chartered member of the DT study section at the NIH and also serves on career development study sections for the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. At CHOP, he serves on his local IRB, is director of clinical research for the cancer center, and co-leads the immune dysregulation frontier program. He also volunteers as the Public Health Officer for his town in Pennsylvania. He has received numerous honor and awards, including election into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2018.
David T. Teachey, MD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Divisions of Hematology and Oncology
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Sara Toomey, MD, MPhil, MPH, MSc, is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, the Director/PI of the federally-funded Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement (CEPQM), and Chief Experience Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. In her role as Director/PI of CEPQM, she has been integral to the development of multiple nationally-recognized pediatric quality measures and has continued her health services research. Her research aims to measure the quality of pediatric care, demonstrate the association between quality measures and healthcare outcomes, and develop interventions to improve outcomes. In her role as Chief Experience Officer, she leads the experience efforts at BCH and oversees measurement and improvement activities working broadly on all aspects of experience including patient experience, staff engagement, and organizational culture.
She received her BA from Holy Cross College. As a Rhodes Scholar, she received her MPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology and MSc in Comparative Social Research from Oxford University. She completed her MD and MPH at Harvard Medical School. She did her pediatric residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and completed the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship.
Sara Toomey, MD, MPhil, MPH, MSc
Chief Experience Officer, Boston Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Vázquez is currently Professor of Pediatrics (General Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases) at the Yale University School of Medicine, Inaugural Vice Chair of Diversity equity and Inclusion, Director of the Yale Pediatrics Global Health Track and Director of the Yale-Children’s Hospital Hispanic Clinic. She studies the clinical epidemiology of infectious diseases in children, focusing on studies that assess the efficacy of vaccines as they are used in every-day clinical practice, also known as effectiveness. for multiple vaccines licensed for use in children and in adults. In particular, focusing on how effective a vaccine is overall, how age and other factors such as gender, race and/or ethnicity influence the effectiveness of a vaccine and on the assessment of risk factors for the diseases that each vaccine prevents. Her epidemiological studies have had direct impact on clinical practice. Her studies of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (with a particular interest on how race impacts the vaccine effectiveness) helped shape recommendations during vaccine shortages. Dr Vázquez is the first Latina to be appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to be a voting member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Dr. Vázquez directs the Yale Pediatrics Global Health track (a training track for pediatrics residents and fellows) and conducts collaborative studies internationally and has developed and directs collaborative projects with the Dominican Republic for the past 10 years. She is interested in culturally-relevant health services interventions for children and families from racial/ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds. Dr. Vázquez has extensive experience as an advocate for diversity and inclusion and Social Justice. She has been a national leader in advocacy and policy for the rights of immigrant and refugee children in the United States and Internationally. Seeing education as crucial in her role, she has led multiple educational initiatives on diversity and inclusion within the Department of Pediatrics (for residents, fellows and faculty) on important topics such as unconscious bias, microaggression, equity in the workplace, leading Pediatrics to become the FIRST department within Yale SOM to make diversity training mandatory. She also has been a leader in recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities in academic programs. Dr. Vazquez is an active member of Yale’s Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion (MORE), an organization that supports both the recruitment and retention of minority faculty through a variety of events and venues
Marietta Vázquez, MD, FAAP
Professor of Pediatrics, Yale School of Medicine
Section of Pediatric Infectious Diseases & Global Health and General Pediatrics
Yatin M. Vyas, MBBS, MD, is Mary Joy and Jerre Stead Professor of Pediatrics at the Carver College of Medicine of the University of Iowa, Iowa city. He is Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Vice Chair for Research in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics, Member of the Executive Leadership Advisory Committee for the NCI-designated Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Assistant Director of the Physician-Scientist Training Program of the College of Medicine. He joined University of Iowa after serving as a faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA, and at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), New York, NY. He trained in Pediatrics at the New York University Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital, and completed fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at the Memorial Hospital of MSKCC and New York-Presbyterian Hospital of Cornell University.
Dr. Vyas is board-certified in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology subspecialty by the American Board of Pediatrics and also holds certifications in Leadership Development for Physicians in Academic Health Centers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. He is currently a scholar in the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs Physician Leadership Development Program (AMSPDC-PLDP). Under Dr. Vyas’ leadership, the division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology instituted a number of new clinical programmatic initiatives that helped recruit and retain first-rate faculty and staff to the University of Iowa, which complemented his other efforts to facilitate recruitment of outstanding physician-scientists into the Department of Pediatrics.
Dr. Vyas maintains an active basic science laboratory that focuses on defining the molecular etiopathogenesis of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS)- an inborn error of immunity. Research from his laboratory was essential in revealing for the first time an evolutionarily-conserved, novel chromatin-resident role for WASp in gene transcription, genome stability, and oncogenesis. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), having received multiple R01 and R21 awards as a principal investigator, in addition to awards from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the United States Immune Deficiency Network (USIDNET). Dr. Vyas has served as an ad hoc member on multiple NIH study sections.
From the business standpoint, Dr. Vyas has keen interest in developing processes to leverage scientific innovations to impart cutting-edge clinical care, grow entrepreneurships, and stimulate philanthropy in a matrixed children’s health care system.
Yatin M. Vyas, MBBS, MD
Mary Joy and Jerre Stead Professor and Vice Chair for Research
Division Director, Pediatric Hematology & Oncology
Stead Family Department of Pediatrics
University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital
Lisa R. Young, MD, is Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). She holds the John M. Keating Endowed Chair, Presidential Scholar at CHOP and is Associate Director of the Penn-CHOP Lung Biology Institute.
She was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia where she was a Jefferson Scholar and then earned her MD and completed residency training in Pediatrics and Internal Medicine at Duke University. She completed fellowship training in Pediatric Pulmonology and Adult Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati, and then joined the faculty at Cincinnati Children’s. In 2011, she relocated to Vanderbilt University, where she was an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Cell & Developmental Biology, Director of the Center for Childhood Lung Research and the Pediatric Rare Lung Diseases Clinical Program, and the Janie Robinson and John Moore Lee Endowed Chairholder in the Department of Pediatrics.
Dr. Young provides clinical care and leads research focused to individuals with interstitial and other rare lung diseases. One area of focus in her laboratory has been on the roles of type II alveolar epithelial cells in the regulation of pulmonary fibrosis and other genetic causes of lung disease. Utilizing mouse models of Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS), her work has provided key evidence that the lung epithelium plays a defining and initiating role in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, while also deciphering mechanisms by which signals from the epithelium are transduced by macrophages and fibroblasts. She has also led a clinical study on HPS pulmonary fibrosis through The Rare Lung Diseases Consortium of the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, an initiative of the Office of Rare Disease Research (ORDR), NCATS and NHLBI that is developing the infrastructure to translate discoveries in the laboratory to patients. In addition, Dr. Young has made significant contributions in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex and Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) through studies on serum VEGF-D as a biomarker and as a co-investigator in clinical trials that led to the first FDA-approved therapy for this disease.
Dr. Young has led foundational efforts in the field of Childhood Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILD). She is the PI of the 20-center U.S. National Registry and observational study in childhood ILD which provides a platform for a spectrum of clinical and translational research. With collaborators, her work has defined the clinical, radiologic, and histologic features of Neuroendocrine cell Hyperplasia of Infancy (NEHI, a form of childhood ILD), and provided new insights into natural history including persistence of disease manifestations in adults. Studies that identified the first genetic contribution to NEHI have elucidated pathogenesis and created opportunities for further mechanistic investigation.
Dr. Young has a long-standing commitment to education and advocacy for patients and families with rare diseases, and she has organized numerous patient education conferences and provided service through advisory boards for several patient advocacy groups. Her service to the academic community has included NIH grant review, participation on NIH and workshop and other clinical guideline committees, and scientific conference leadership, including FASEB, NIH R13-funded conferences, and as Program Committee Chair for Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology Assembly of the American Thoracic Society.
She has received multiple awards for her research and advocacy, with examples including the American Thoracic Society Robert B. Mellins Outstanding Achievement Award, the American Thoracic Society Public Advisory Roundtable Excellence Award, and the LAM Foundation Scientific Advancement Award, and the Scientific Advancement award from the Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome Network. Dr. Young has been awarded a K24 grant for mentoring in Patient-Oriented Research in Pediatric Rare Lung Diseases has mentored fellows in pediatric pulmonary and other training programs, as well as a number of students, residents, and junior faculty.
Lisa R. Young, MD
Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)
John M. Keating Endowed Chair, Presidential Scholar at CHOP
Associate Director of the Penn-CHOP Lung Biology Institute