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Dr. Jennifer Arnold
joined our fellowship program in July 2006 after having completed a pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital and fellowship in neonatology at Magee Women’s Hospital. She joined our T32 training program in Pediatric Neurointensive Care and Research in July 2006. In July 2007, and is carrying out an important clinical trial on the use of simulation for resident training in neonatal intubation and resuscitation skills. Dr. Arnold is being mentored by a team that includes Drs. Melinda Fiedor-Hamilton, Robert Kanter, Robert Clark and Patrick Kochanek. Dr. Arnold has accepted a position at Stoneybrook University as a Clinical Assistant Professor in Pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology.

Dr. Sandra Buttram
joined our fellowship program in 2003. She did her residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and during her fellowship in the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Program at Children’s Hospital, carried out research at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research and was co-mentored by Drs. Edwin Jackson and Patrick Kochanek. Dr. Buttram’s research focused on the application of novel Luminex technology assessment of multiple cytokines in the response to experimental sepsis and clinical traumatic brain injury. Dr. Buttram presented her work at the 2006 SCCM Congress and has just submitted a manuscript to the Journal of Neurotrauma on the effect of therapeutic hypothermia on the cytokine response after severe traumatic brain injury in infants and children. After completing her fellowship training, Dr. Buttram joined the faculty in the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital in Phoenix, AZ.

Mandeep Chadha, MD
Dr. Chadha completed work on the T32 this year. Dr. Larry Jenkins was his PT mentor in the field of the application of proteomics to experimental research in ischemia and TBI. Dr. Jenkins has the first publication of the use of proteomics in TBI and is a superb mentor. Drs. Kochanek, Clark, and Wisniewski served as ATs. Dr. Chadha presented his work on proteomics in brain injury at 8 meetings. He has a full manuscript in preparation as first author and will co-author numerous others in this emerging area. He presented this work at the NICHD/NCMRR research trainee day (attended by ~200 trainees) and it was selected as one of the top 3 papers. He just joined the faculty at Dallas Children’s Hospital University of Texas Southwestern and plans to continue his work in proteomics as a faculty member.

Dr. Alia Dennis
joined our fellowship program in July 2004. She is a senior fellow in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine who has been working in the area of combined traumatic brain injury and hemorrhagic shock in a program funded to Dr. Kochanek from the United States Army. She has characterized this model including both histology and cerebral blood flow—as assessed by magnetic resonance imaging in collaboration with our colleagues at the Pittsburgh NMR Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Dennis has presented this work at both the 2006 National Neurotrauma Society meeting and the 2007 Congress of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. For her work presented to the SCCM, she received the 2007 In-training award—which is given for the top abstract submitted by a fellow to the Congress. Recently, she published a manuscript on blast-induced traumatic brain injury in the 2007 Yearbook of Intensive Care.

Dr. Tomas Drabek
joined our fellowship program in January 2004. He trained in anesthesiology in Prague, Czechoslovakia including special expertise in cardiac anesthesia. After doing research as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Minnesota, he chose to continue to develop his academic skills working in the area of novel resuscitation approaches in cardiac arrest. Dr. Drabek has built upon the work in our Center in the area of Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR) for otherwise lethal exsanguination cardiac arrest and has developed a rat model of EPR to serve as a tool both to study molecular mechanisms and to screen novel therapies. Dr. Drabek has published the first description of that new model recently in the journal Critical Care Medicine. He has also been involved in our large animal work with EPR. This year, Dr. Drabek will serve as the 2007 Charles Schertz Fellow in the Department of Anesthesiology.

Melinda Fiedor, MD
Dr. Fiedor completed the T32 in 2005. She worked with Dr. Schaefer as her PT, and Drs. Kochanek, Thompson, and Clark as ATs. Her project involved the development and application of a new powerful research and education tool—SimBaby® (Laerdal). Dr. Fiedor worked on the development, beta testing, and initial evaluation in clinical trials of this new tool for teaching resuscitation to pediatric residents, medical students, fellows, EMS workers, and faculty. Her first research study with this new tool was presented last Feb at the 2005 SCCM Congress. A full manuscript of that study is in preparation. This is a unique opportunity involving WISER in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh (directed by Dr Schaefer). She has also written the first review article in the new field of human simulation in pediatric resuscitation research, and published 3 abstracts and a chapter on this novel topic. She also obtained a Masters degree in medical education during her training on the T32 with a focus in medical education research. We are only one of 3 sites in the world testing SimBaby® making this a career-launching opportunity for her in simulation research in pediatric resuscitation. Mindy joined our faculty this year and capitalized on the value of SimBaby® and developed a simulation-based training course for new PICU fellows that was implemented this July in our program. It was extremely well-received.

Ericka Fink, MD
Dr. Fink is in her second year on the T32. She is working under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Clark and is studying experimental asphyxial CA in a rat model. Her ATs are Drs. Dixon and Kochanek. She has been highly productive in her first year having published a full manuscript on this new model relevant to our field in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and more recently, a report on the beneficial effect of mild hypothermia in this model—in the journal Developmental Neuroscience. Her current work is assessing the effects of the brain penetrating antioxidant GCEE in her model, for which she received an award for the top paper presented at the 2005 Fellows Day meeting of the Pennsylvania-Delaware Heart Association. She is also in the Masters of Clinical Research program at the University of Pittsburgh and plans to obtain a Master’s degree in her second year of training.

Yong Han, MD
Dr. Han completed training on the T32 in June of 2003. Dr. Han worked in the area of shock (both clinical and basic) and studied mitochondrial failure and markers of injury with Dr. Reynolds as his laboratory mentor (AT) and Dr. Carcillo as his clinical mentor (PT). Dr. Clark was also an AT for Dr. Han. Dr. Han presented abstracts at numerous scientific meetings. He authored 7 papers while on the T32 including an important recent report in the journal Pediatrics on shock in the pre-hospital phase in critically ill infants and children, 2 first-author papers on procalcitonin in pediatric shock and pediatric TBI, both published in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and 2 manuscripts as a co-author on mitochondrial failure, one in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and one in Experimental Neurology. His collected work on the T32 has already been cited 55 times in the literature. He recently joined the CCM faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, is preparing a K0-8 application and is pursuing an academic career.

Mary Hartman, MD
Dr. Hartman completed her training on the T32 in June of 2004. She obtained formal research training toward the acquisition of an MPH from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. She has remained in Pittsburgh for an additional year of fellowship after the T32, in part, to complete final coursework on her MPH, and since she undertook some of her research training first. She continues to work under the mentorship of Dr. Derek Angus (PT)—on ICU outcomes. Drs. Kochanek and Clark were her ATs. Her work has focused on evaluation of appropriateness of triage of pediatric TBI victims. She presented an abstract on this project, using a database generated from 7 states in the US, entitled “Is the management of severe TBI in children in the US appropriately regionalized” at the 32nd SCCM Congress. She found remarkable heterogeneous regionalization of trauma care and a large number of children dying in non-tertiary centers. A full manuscript of that work is in preparation. She is part of Dr. Angus’ renowned CRISMA ICU outcomes group and is an author or co-author of 8 abstracts and 2 editorials. We anticipate that her work will have an important impact on the field. She plans to submit a K12 application here at the University of Pittsburgh in early 2006, near the completion of her clinical training.

Yi-Chen Lai, MD
Dr. Lai is in his second year on the T32 and is similarly working under the mentorship of Dr. Clark. His committee includes Drs. Jenkins and Kochanek as ATs. Dr. Lai is working on the stress response in brain injury and is focused on HSP70. He has already published a clinical report on HSP 70 expression in infants and children with TBI in the Journal of Neurotrauma and a paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry on the use of TAT-HSP delivery in an in vitro brain injury model in neuronal culture. Yi-Chen is also a co-author on 4 additional manuscripts including a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He is expanding his work to isolated mitochondria in his most recent studies where he is evaluating the effect of PARP activation in the stress response to peroxynitrate-induced injury. His most recent work was presented at the 2004 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the 2005 SCCM Congress. He has received 2 scientific awards from the SCCM. He will continue is focus in basic neuroscience in cell stress during the second year on the T32.

Dr. Mioara Manole
began fellowship training in our Center July 2006 as a T32 fellow. Dr. Manole is the first pediatric emergency medicine fellow to be funded by our T32 program from NICHD. She did her pediatric residency training at Mercy Children’s Medical Center in Pittsburgh and recently completed clinical pediatric emergency medicine fellowship training at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Dr. Manole is studying the cerebral blood flow response to asphyxial cardiac arrest in a developing (post-natal day 17) rat model under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Clark and the investigative team at the Pittsburgh NMR Center for Biomedical Research/Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Manole received 2nd prize for her presentation at the Annual Pulse of Pittsburgh Fellow Research Day sponsored by the Pennsylvania/Delaware Affiliate of the American Heart Association in February 2007.

Trung Nguyen, MD
Dr. Nguyen completed training on the T32 in June of 2003. He worked with Dr. Carcillo (PT) with AT input from Drs. Wisniewski, Clark, and the late Dr. Safar on the role of microvascular thrombosis in the development of MOF after shock and resuscitation. Dr. Nguyen carried out detailed studies of the coagulation cascade in infants and children with shock and MOF. He evaluated plasma exchange therapy in a positive RCT. He presented 7 abstracts and won an Educational Scholarship from SCCM for work on “Von Willebrand factor cleaving protease in children with MOF.” He was a highly recruited fellow and chose a faculty position at the Baylor College of Medicine–working on the PICU faculty and continuing his research with Dr. Jose Lopez, an expert in the molecular biology of coagulation. Dr. Nguyen carried out an RCT on the use of plasma exchange in the treatment of thrombocytopenia-associated multiple organ failure—work that is in preparation for submission to the journal Blood. He also published, as first author, a review article on coagulation in microvascular failure in MOF in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. He was just funded by a K12 in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor, and by a grant for the American Heart Association, Texas Affiliate working in the area of the molecular biology of coagulation disturbances in shock. I believe that he will have a longstanding career as a clinician-scientist.

Dr. Steven Robert
is a fellow in the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine program at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He did his residency at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Robert is working on the role of high mobility group box-1 (HMGB-1) in septic shock under the mentorship of Drs. Mitchell Fink and Rajesh Aneja. He presented the initial findings of his research at the 2007 Congress of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Robert has just accepted a position in our T32 fellowship training program at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research and plans to continue to develop his research in this important area of inflammatory signaling in sepsis.

Dr. Ajit Sarnaik
joined our fellowship program in July 2005. He did his pediatric residency training at Children’s Hospital of Michigan. He is currently a fellow in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Ajit is working under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Clark with co-mentoring from Dr. Yvette Conley and is studying P-glycoprotein polymorphisms and their relationship to outcome after severe traumatic brain injury. In February 2007, Dr. Sarnaik received an educational scholarship from the SCCM for his work in this area. Dr. Sarnaik will join our T32 training program in Pediatric Neurointensive Care and Research beginning in July 2007.

Margaret Satchell, MD
Dr. Satchell completed her training on the T32 on June 30th, 2003. She worked with Dr. Robert Clark (PT) in the area of poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) activation in TBI. Her ATs were Drs. Dixon, Jenkins, and Kochanek. During her training, Margaret gave presentations of her research at the Society for Neuroscience, National Neurotrauma Society [2], and SCCM [2]) and garnered several awards including the prestigious Murray Goldstein Award at the National Neurotrauma Society meeting and a Scientific Award from the SCCM. Dr. Satchell had a comprehensive first-author manuscript published in the Journal of Neurochemistry entitled “A dual role of poly-ADP-ribosylation in spatial memory acquisition after TBI in mice involving NAD+ depletion and ribosylation of 14-3-3γ.” She has a second manuscript on cytochrome-c release in CSF after TBI in infants and children that is in press in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. She has another manuscript on PARP activation in human cerebral contusions in preparation. She is currently on the faculty in the Dept. of Pediatrics (CCM division) in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Dr. David Shellington
is a fellow in the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine program at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He did his residency training in pediatrics at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth. Dr. Shellington is studying the inflammatory response to the important combination of severe traumatic brain injury and hemorrhagic shock in a new mouse model that has been developed in our center. He is examining both the local response to this combined insult in brain and the systemic inflammatory response in this important condition. His initial area of focus is on microglial activation in brain and the systemic and cerebral cytokine response—with a goal of developing and testing novel anti-inflammatory therapies. Dr. Shellington is working under the mentorship of Dr. Kochanek on a project funded by the United States Army.

Paul Shore, MD
Dr. Shore also completed his training on the T-32 in June of 2004. His PT mentor was Dr. Kochanek and Drs. Jackson, Adelson, Jenkins, and Wisniewski served as ATs. He studied both the impact of the mode of CSF drainage and moderate hypothermia on ICP and biochemical mediators in pediatric TBI—bridging bench to bedside. He presented a paper at the SCCM Congress on continuous vs intermittent CSF drainage after severe TBI in children and received an educational scholarship. He also presented a paper at the 2003 WFPICCS Congress on Critical Care on the impact of therapeutic hypothermia on the biochemical response to TBI in children and won the Neuroscience award. He also completed a “Masters of Clinical Research” and defended his thesis. He published a manuscript in 2004 in Neurosurgery on vascular endothelial growth factor in pediatric TBI and a second paper in the Journal of Neurotrauma on the effect of continuous vs intermittent CSF drainage in pediatric TBI. His third paper, in revision at Critical Care Medicine, defines a tool (the PILOT scale) for quantifying treatment intensity for head injured children. He also received a grant from the Laerdal Foundation. Paul is now on the ICU faculty at the Dallas Children’s Hospital-University of Texas Southwestern. He was specifically recruited to develop clinical research in pediatric neurointensive care. He has already submitted a K12 and plans to submit a K23. He has obtained IRB approval for a multi-center RCT of CSF drainage method in pediatric TBI in Dallas. He is poised to develop into a clinical investigator in pediatric neurointensive care.

Kimberly Statler, MD
Dr. Statler also completed her training on the T32 on June 30th, 2002. She worked with Dr. Kochanek studying the effect of sedation and anesthesia in experimental TBI. Her ATs were Drs. Dixon, Marion, Jenkins, and Wisniewski. During her training, she acquired a grant from the Laerdal Foundation and received the Woman in Neurotrauma award from the National Neurotrauma Society. She published 4 manuscripts as a first author in the area of anesthetic effects in experimental TBI and has a fifth paper in press in the Journal of Neurotrauma and a sixth submitted to Brain Research. She carried out the most comprehensive evaluation to date of anesthetics in experimental TBI. She presented abstracts at numerous conferences. Dr. Statler’s fourth manuscript was featured on the cover of the Feb. 6th, 2004 issue of Brain Research. The article was published in December 2003 in that same journal. Her collected work on the T32 has already been cited 66 times in the literature. She is on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics (CCM), University of Utah. She has gone on to obtain a Masters in Clinical Research and is funded by a K12 at the University of Utah in the area of experimental epilepsy in developmental neurotrauma.

Dr. Karen Walson
joined our fellowship program in 2005. She did her residency training at Georgetown University Hospital. Dr. Walson is working on a fascinating project investigating the role of peroxidases in the evolution of secondary damage across the settings of CNS injury, shock, and multiple organ failure under the mentorship of Dr. Hülya Bayır. The overall hypothesis of this project centers around the concept that the release of substances such as cytochrome c and free iron in these insults, can set the stage for the generation of peroxidase activity leading to oxidative stress and both parenchymal vascular secondary injury. Dr. Walson presented an initial report of her findings at the 2007 Congress of the SCCM. Her work represents a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh Center for Free Radical and Antioxidant Health, the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, and the Department of Critical Care Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Xianren Wu, MD

Hülya Bayir, MD

Margaret Wilson, PhD