2022-2024

Caitlin McNamara, MD

Mentors: Rachel Berger, MD, MPH and Ericka Fink, MD, MS

Dr. McNamara finished her training on our T32 in 2024. She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was an award-winning and highly productive trainee during her T32 fellowship.  She focused on the topic of abusive head trauma (the shaken baby syndrome) in infants.  She published papers on the topics of both long-term outcomes and multiple organ failure in victims of abusive head trauma.  For her work she received the bronze medal at the 2023 Congress of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the 2024 National Neurotrauma Society Travel Award, was a Fink Scholar Abstract Winner, was selected as the top clinical fellow across all divisions in Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in 2023 and was the Nancy Caroline Fellow award winner at the Safar Center in 2024.  She has joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Bailey Petersen, PhD, MS

Mentor: Amery Treble-Barna, PhD

Dr. Peterson completed her training on our T32 in 2024.  She came to our program with a PhD in Bioengineering-Neural Engineering and a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of Pittsburgh. She studied BDNF DNA methylation in association with neurobehavioral recovery in children with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), incorporating physical activity monitoring into the clinical trial design.  She was an outstanding trainee and received multiple awards including a two-year Early Investigator Seed Grant from the Brain Injury Association of America, and the Early Career Poster Award for the Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Annual Conference, among others.  She has six listings on PubMed.  Bailey was former T32 graduate Dr. Amery Treble-Barna’s first mentee on our T32.  Bailey just joined the faculty of our Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation as an Assistant Professor and has already submitted a K99 award to expand her clinical trial.

2021-2023

Elizabeth Castellano, PhD

Mentor: Hülya Bayır, MD

Dr. Castellano completed her T32 training after completing part of a third year in our T32 program.  She came to our program with a PhD in Biochemistry from Duquesne University to work with Dr. Bayır. She studied the role of vitamin C in mitochondrial metabolism with a specific focus on the immunomodulatory tricarboxylic acid cycle metabolite itaconate.  She published, as dual first author, an outstanding manuscript in the high impact journal, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care. She also won the Department of Critical Care Medicine trainee award at the 2023 Safar Symposium.  She is currently a Scientist at Galapagos, a company in Pittsburgh that is developing novel biologics in oncology and immunology.

Jeremy Herrmann, MD

Mentors: Patrick M. Kochanek, MD, Travis Jackson, PhD

Dr. Herrmann completed his T32 training in 2023.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was an outstanding trainee.  He studied the cold stress response as a translational scientist, to develop adjunctive therapies to enhance the potential benefits of therapeutic hypothermia for the treatment of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury after cardiac arrest in infants and children.  He carried out studies in both a developmental mouse model of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and clinical investigations in infants and children with cardiac arrest.  During his T32 training, he was able to acquire grants as principal investigator from both the Zoll Foundation, the Laerdal Foundation, and the Reback Family Gift, won multiple awards for his research and published numerous manuscripts.  He already has 12 listings on PubMed from his work funded by the T32.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he is continuing his translational research in resuscitation medicine.

2020-2022

Jonathan Pelletier, MD

Mentor: Christopher M. Horvat, MD, MHA

Dr. Pelletier completed his T32 training in 2022.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was an incredibly productive trainee.  His work included examination of variability in mechanical ventilation and sedation strategies for children with bronchiolitis, and their relationship to morbidity and mortality. His long-term goal is to develop EHR-integrated decision support tools that can offer the bedside clinician insight into the probability of clinical deterioration and response to therapy in pediatric ICU patients.  Remarkably, he already has 33 listings on PubMed including first author papers from his T32 training including multiple papers in JAMA Network Open, and publications in Lancet Regional Health Americas, Pediatrics, Hospital Pediatrics, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, among others.  He was the first mentee of Dr, Christopher Horvat, who also trained on our T32.  He is an Assistant Professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University, Assistant Director of Clinical Informatics, Hospital Based Systems, Hospital Based Cluster Clinical Data Scientist, and Pediatric Intensivist at Akron Children’s Hospital.

Jay Rakkar, MD

Mentors: Christopher M. Horvat, Robert S.B. Clark, MD and Gilles Clermont, MD, MSc

Dr. Rakkar completed his T32 training in 2022.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow studied  novel approaches to bedside monitoring in pediatric neurocritical care including projects on brain tissue oxygenation, intracranial compliance, and non-invasive assessment of intracranial pressure.  He currently has nine listings on PubMed.  He is on the faculty in the division of critical care medicine in Phoenix Children’s Hospital with a specific research focus on leveraging technologies and data analytics to maximize outcomes in patients across pediatric neurocritical care.

2019-2021

Neil Munjal, MD, MS

Mentors: Christopher M. Horvat, MD and Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Munjal completed training in 2021. He was our first trainee from the Division of Child Neurology, with dual clinical training in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.  He studied the use of machine learning for advanced predictive modeling in the neurologically injured patient, using large EMR-derived datasets as well as incorporating high-fidelity data such as EEG and MRI. His long-term goal is to establish useful clinical decision support tools in the ICU that will improve the care of all critically ill patients.  He also obtained a Master of Science Degree in Intelligence Systems.  He is an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics, division of critical care at the University of Wisconsin, with focus in pediatric neurocritical care and is continuing his research on the application of machine learning methods in neurocritical care.   He has seven listings on PubMed.

2018-2020

Jessica Jarvis, PhD

Mentors:  Ericka Fink, MD, MS and Amy Houtrow, MD, MPH, PhD

Dr. Jarvis completed training on our T32 in 2020.  She was a unique postdoctoral trainee from the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with a PhD in rehabilitation science and clinical training in music therapy.  She developed a clinical feasibility trial of music therapy as an adjunct to pharmacological sedation and analgesia in children treated with respiratory failure in the pediatric ICU.  She is also defining trajectories of functional recovery post-pediatric critical illness for children and their families, using multidisciplinary approaches to provide granular detail on patient and family important rehabilitation outcomes.  She joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation here at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is a Mellon Scholar, and has already received a K23 award titled “Music listening interventions for children receiving mechanical ventilation: A mechanistic trial” to support her research.  She is also collaborating with Safar Center investigators to study the impact of music therapy in a pre-clinical model of traumatic brain injury.  She has 12 listings on PubMed.

Justin Azar, MD

Mentors: Michael Morowitz, MD and Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Justin Azar, MD, completed his T32 training in 2020.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who carried out clinical research in two areas of interest, namely, on brain tissue oxygen monitoring after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in infants and children and on the alterations of the microbiome after severe pediatric TBI, and published papers on both topics.  He is a Pediatric Intensivist at Children’s Hospital, Geisinger Medical Center, Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and he is the Director of the Inpatient-to-Home Chronic Ventilation Program.

2017-2019

Alicia Alcamo, MD, MPH

Mentor: Rajesh Aneja, MD

Alicia Alcamo, MD, MPH competed work on the T32 in 2019.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was an extremely productive and award-winning fellow who merged her clinical interest in the critical care management of solid organ transplant patients into her research pursuits, focusing on the unique risks for both sepsis and neurotoxicity resulting from their necessary immunosuppression.  She also gained experience in preclinical translational research and carried out and published a study examining MRI biomarkers of brain injury in a murine sepsis model.  She was highly recruited and is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was selected as the fellow of the year by the residents at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and won the Nancy Caroline Award at the Safar Center.  She is currently studying long-term outcomes from septic encephalopathy in infant and children and is pursuing K23 funding on that topic.  She is a young investigator with a remarkable publication record, currently with 36 listings on PubMed.

Michael Wolf, MD

Mentors: Robert S.B. Clark, MD and Gilles Clermont, MD, MSc

Michael Wolf, MD completed training on the T32 in 2019.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was a translational investigator who developed a new approach to assess glymphatic flux from the brain in an experimental model and developed and tested a novel neuromonitoring techniques to assess intracranial compliance at the bedside in children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Dr. Wolf is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the division of Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and the director of neurocritical care at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.  He already has 18 listings on PubMed and is studying the use of ketamine as a sedative to control intracranial hypertension in infants and children with severe TBI.  He has carried out groundbreaking initial work on that clinical strategy and hopes to pursue K23 funding to develop a multi-center clinical trial of this therapy.

2016-2018

Amery Treble-Barna, PhD

Mentors: Yvette Conley, PhD and Patrick M. Kochanek, MD

Dr. Treble-Barna completed her T32 training in 2018. She was a postdoctoral fellow who came to our program after completing PhD training in clinical psychology, an internship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in neuropsychology, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital studying long-term outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI). She was T32 trainee with a host of outstanding accomplishments. She studied the epigenetics and genetics of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in infants and children after TBI. She was awarded the Early Career Pilot Award from the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology, a grant from the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology Foundation, and multiple grants from the University of Pittsburgh UPMC Rehabilitation Institute and served as a Mellon Scholar at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Treble-Barna adeptly used the many resources of the T32 to carry out the pilot study that allowed her to obtain a KL2 funded through the CTSI in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and rapidly transitioned that KL2 to a K01 from NICHD to support a larger 300 patient study.  She has gone on the receive as principal investigator, an R01 on “Methylomics of pediatric TBI and neurobehavioral recovery” along with an R03 award.  She has a superb publication record for a young investigator currently with 39 listings on PubMed and she serves as a pediatric neuropsychologist co-investigator on multiple studies by Safar Center investigators and others.  She is a rising star in the field, a new mentor on our T32 and has taught a grant writing course for our trainees across multiple departments.

Jessica Wallisch, MD

Mentor: Patrick M. Kochanek, MD

Dr. Wallisch completed training on our T32 in 2018.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied molecular mechanisms of cerebral edema in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and cardiac arrest focusing on danger signals and related pathways involved in the development of cerebral edema, i.e., aquaporin-4 (AQP4) and the sulfonylurea receptor-1. She was very productive and award winning.  For her publication in Pediatric Research on effect of the novel AQP4 antagonist, AER-271 on the development of cerebral edema after cardiac arrest in immature rats she received the 2018 SCCM young investigator award and was the feature of an Early Career Investigator Bio-Commentary in Pediatric Research, among other awards.  She was the first author of a well-cited study in Neurocritical Care showing that a trigger of neuroinflammation, NLRP3, was increased in CSF of infants and children after severe TBI. She also received a grant from the Laerdal Foundation during training.  She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Kansas Mercy Hospital and the University Missouri-Kansas City focused on Neurocritical Care.  She is funded as principal investigator by the American Heart Association to test ultralow-field portable bedside Magnetic Resonance neuroimaging in infants and children treated with ECMO in the pediatric ICU.

2015-2017

Christopher M. Horvat, MD, MHA

Mentors: Philip E. Empey, PhD and Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Horvat completed his training on our T32 in June of 2017.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who during his training completed a master’s degree in health administration via the Dept. of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. The degree provided a core curriculum like an MPH, with courses in biostatistics and health policy, but allowed him to focus on hospital epidemiology, quantitative workflow analysis, clinical decision analysis and quality improvement theory. He graduated at the top of his class.  He is exceptionally well published with over 100 citations on PubMed and numerous papers in high impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine.  Chris received the 2017 Nancy Caroline Award as the top trainee at the Safar Center, was inducted into Delta Omega, the top honor society in public health, and has subsequently been funded by a K23 and an R01.  He joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine, is an expert in big data approaches and the EMR, is a Safar Center Associate Director, and is the Director of Clinical Informatics for our department.   He has already gone to become a successful mentor of trainees on this T32.

Shaun Carlson, PhD

Mentor: C. Edward Dixon, PhD

Shaun Carlson, PhD trained for one year on our T32 beginning in 2015. He was the first trainee in our T32 program from the Department of Neurological Surgery.  He was supported by our T32 for only one year because he submitted and received an F32 grant and transitioned to funding from that award.  On the T32 he studied and published on synaptic injury after traumatic brain injury, specifically SNARE proteins which continues to be his area of study.  Dr. Carlson was awarded a faculty position as Research Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and has joined the faculty of the Safar Center.  He has been highly successful as a junior faculty member and has gone on to receive many grants as PI or MPI including an R21 and R01, and grants from the Department of Defense, the Chuck Noll Foundation, and he was a Mellon Scholar. He is a Safar Center Associate Director.  He already serves as a mentor or co-mentor of trainees on this T32.

2014-2017

Diana Pang, MD

Mentors: Rajesh Aneja MD and Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Pang completed her training on our T32 in 2017.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked under the dual mentorship of Drs. Robert Clark and Rajesh Aneja on the topic of septic encephalopathy using a mouse model and translational studies using serum biomarkers in pediatric sepsis patients.  She was the recipient of the Young Investigator Award from the Shock Society.  She published multiple papers including a well cited report in the journal Shock titled Early Axonal Injury and Delayed Cytotoxic Cerebral Edema are Associated with Microglial Activation in a Mouse Model of Sepsis.   She is on the pediatric critical care medicine faculty of the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters, in Norfolk VA.

2013-2015

Erik Brockman, MD

Mentor: Patrick M. Kochanek, MD

Dr. Brockman completed our T32 mentored by Dr. Patrick Kochanek.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied novel resuscitation strategies for the combination of severe traumatic brain injury plus hemorrhagic shock using a novel mouse model.  He published, three manuscripts, two as first author, in the Journal of Neurotrauma and the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism on work focused largely on the novel resuscitation agent polynitroxylated pegylated hemoglobin (PNPH).  He is currently on the faculty of Children’s Minnesota, the Gillette Children’s Hospital, and is a member of Children’s Respiratory & Critical Care in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Dennis W. Simon, MD

Mentor: Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Simon was an exceptionally successful trainee on our T32.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked on HMGB1 and the microglial response to traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the developing brain under the mentorship of Dr. Clark.   He was awarded the 2014 SCCM “In-Training” Research Award for the top paper by a trainee at the SCCM congress.  He was also selected as the top clinical fellow across all divisions in Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Simon has generated an outstanding publication record with 28 listings on PubMed.  His review on neuroinflammation after TBI, published in Nature Reviews in Neurology has been cited over 600 times.  He has received both R21 and R01 awards from NIH for his work and is currently an Associate Professor of Critical Care Medicine, Director of Neurocritical Care at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and an Associate Director at the Safar Center. He is also a leading educator Nationally in the field of pediatric neurocritical care and has already gone to become a successful mentor of trainees on this T32.

2012-2014

Nahmah Kim-Campbell, MD, MS

Mentor: Hülya Bayır, MD and Mark Gladwin, MD

Dr. Kim-Campbell completed her training on our T32 in 2014.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was a highly successful graduate.  While funded by the T32 she studied the effect of hemolysis on kidney and brain injury in children after cardiopulmonary bypass and carried out parallel investigations in a rat cardiopulmonary bypass model.  She has nine publications and has been subsequently funded by K12, K23, and R21 awards.  She is currently an Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine in our Department and is an Associate Director of The Safar Center.

Nikki Miller Ferguson, MD

Mentor: Michael J. Bell, MD

Dr. Ferguson completed her T32 training in 2014.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was another outstanding graduate.  Her translational research addressed intracranial pressure thresholds for infants in children with severe traumatic brain injury, with a focus on the topic of abusive head trauma. She has over 11 listings on PubMed including several important papers in the field on the topic of neurocritical care of victims of abusive head trauma.  This includes key reports on that topic from the ADAPT comparative effectiveness trial in pediatric traumatic brain injury, on which she has served as one of the site principal investigators.  She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the division of pediatric critical care medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University.  

2011-2013

Kathryn C. Russell, PhD

Mentor: Amy K. Wagner, MD and Joseph H. Ricker

Dr. Russell completed T32 training in June 2013. She was the first PhD postdoctoral trainee in our program and the first trainee from the Dept. of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.  She joined us with a specific interest in working on post traumatic brain injury assessments of cognitive outcome and functional MRI in children.  She was co-mentored by Drs. Wagner and Riker.  She was published 5 papers including papers in J Clin Exp Neuropsychol, Brain Injury, and J Head Trauma Rehab.

Steven L. Shein, MD

Dual Mentors: Michael J. Bell, MD and Rachel P. Berger, MD

Dr. Shein completed T32 training in June 2013.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was highly successful and carried out bench-to-bedside research in traumatic brain injury including clinical studies on therapies and abusive head trauma, and pre-clinical studies on neuroinflammation.  He received the McGrevin award for excellence and the Nancy Caroline award during his training.  He is an Associate Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Chief of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.  He holds the Linsalata Family Chair in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Critical Care and Co-Directs the PICU Clinical & Translational Research Program.  He has over 130 listings on PubMed and has been a site principal investigator on numerous grants.  His center was invited to join the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network in 2021.  He also co-founded the BACON (Bronchiolitis: Advancing Care and Outcomes Network) sub-group of Pediatric Acute Lunge Injury and Sepsis Investigators (PALISI).

2010-2012

Alicia K. Au, MD, MS

Mentor: Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Au completed T32 training in June 2012.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who during her T32 training had many accomplishments.  She focused on biomarkers of autophagy and neuronal death.  She received a remarkable 6 research awards including the Neurology Specialty Award at the 2010 Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Congress, the top paper as a fellow at the 2010 Pediatric Critical Care Colloquium, and the 2014 SCCM Young Investigator Award, among many others.  She has gone on to receive a K23 and R01 awards focused on the development of a bio-digital rapid alert to identify neuromorbidity in infants and children across the pediatric intensive care unit.  She is an Associate Professor of CCM at the University of Pittsburgh and is also the Medical Director of the Pediatric ICU at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Au has over 40 listings on PubMed.

Erik R. Su, MD

Mentor: Hülya Bayır, MD

Dr. Su completed T32 training in June 2012.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who was another productive fellow who studied oxidation of synaptic proteins and mitochondria in experimental and clinical brain injury.  Dr. Su also completed a pediatric cardiac ICU fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine and has become one of the leaders in the field of point-of-care ultrasound in pediatric critical care with over 30 listings on that topic on PubMed and a role in Guidelines development in pediatric ultrasound use in both the pediatric cardiac and general ICU.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Section on Critical Care at the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.

2009-2011

Rosanne Salonia, MD

Mentors: Samuel Poloyac, PharmD, PhD and Patrick M. Kochanek, MD

Dr. Salonia completed T32 training in June 2011. She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied ischemic mediators in pediatric traumatic brain injury and abusive head trauma and worked under the dual mentorship Drs. Samuel Poloyac and Kochanek.  She published papers in the Journal of Neurotrauma and Developmental Neuroscience including a clinical study of a novel diagnostic approach to detect intracranial hemorrhages in infants using near infrared spectroscopy.  She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut and Connecticut Children’s Hospital in Hartford.

Rebecca L. Smith, MD

Mentor: Michael J. Bell, MD

Dr. Smith completed T32 training in June 2011 and worked under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Bell. She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who focused on clinical studies of nutrition and nutritional markers in pediatric traumatic brain injury and has published papers on both hyperglycemia in pediatric traumatic brain injury and pediatric delirium.  She also completed a pediatric cardiac ICU fellowship at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  She has served as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the PICU at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  She was recently recruited back to UPMC and is now Medical Director of the Pediatric intensive care unit at UPMC Harrisburg Children’s Hospital.  Her current interests include quality improvement, teaching and pediatric critical care transport.

2008-2010

Jennifer Exo, DO

Mentors:  Edwin Jackson, PhD and Patrick Kochanek, MD

Dr. Exo completed T32 training in June 2010.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked in the laboratory of Jackson, studying the microglial response to TBI and its regulation by adenosine, including work in primary microglial culture and carried out studies comparing resuscitation approaches in a preclinical murine model of traumatic brain injury complicated by secondary hemorrhagic shock.  She was a very productive fellow with 9 publications.   She initially joined the faculty of the University of Colorado as an Assistant Professor followed by serving on the faculty of Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.  She is currently a pediatrician in Plymouth, Minnesota.

2007-2010

Craig M. Smith, MD

Mentor: Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Smith completed T32 training in June 2010.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied autophagy and membrane transporters in experimental and clinical traumatic brain injury.  He received an annual Scientific Award at the Society of Critical Care Medicine congress and published first author papers in the Neurobiology of Disease and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.  He joined the faculty at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine in Chicago, with a special focus on pediatric neurocritical care.  He is now an Associate Professor within the Ruth D. & Ken M. Davee Pediatric Neurocritical Care Program.  He has over 20 listings on PubMed and been a site principal investigator on numerous studies including trials of early rehabilitation and the P-ICECAP study, among others.

2007-2009

Stephen M. Robert, MD

Mentor:  Timothy Billiar, MD

Dr. Robert completed T32 training in June 2009.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked in the laboratory of Dr. Timothy Billiar, a pioneer in molecular work in hemorrhagic shock.  He studied HBGB1 signaling in experimental rodent models and in clinical sepsis in children.  He received the Cell Biology award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine in 2010.  He joined the faculty as Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham where he worked until 2016.  He is now Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where he is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Cardiology.  He is also an Associate Clinical Professor in the David Geffen School or Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Ajit A. Sarnaik, MD

Dual Mentors: Robert S.B. Clark, MD and Yvette Conley, PhD

Dr. Sarnaik completed T32 training in June 2009.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked in the lab of Dr. Clark with dual mentoring from geneticist Dr. Conley.  He studied the role of  poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) in traumatic brain injury including both preclinical and clinical investigations on PARP single-nucleotide polymorphisms, presented at numerous conferences, published four manuscripts, and received an educational scholarship to the Society of Critical Care Medicine Congress.  He is an Associate Professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine, on the pediatric critical care medicine attending staff of Children’s Hospital of Michigan and is the Fellowship Director of the Program.  He served as an important site principal investigator for the ADAPT trial in pediatric traumatic brain injury and has authored or co-authored multiple manuscripts related to that study in Neurocritical Care, Critical Care Medicine, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and JAMA Network Open.

2006-2008

Mioara D. Manole, MD

Dual Mentors: Chien Ho, PhD and Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Manole completed T32 training in June 2008. She was our first recruit from the Department of Pediatrics  in the Division of Emergency Medicine.  She focused on the microcirculation after cardiac arrest in preclinical investigations in the developing brain and was highly successful and an award-winning trainee publishing multiple manuscripts.  After completing her fellowship training, Dr. Manole joined the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh in the division of pediatric emergency medicine.  She has continued her work studying microcirculatory disturbances and cerebral blood flow-augmenting therapies and has received an American Heart Association (AHA) young investigator grant, K08, R21 and R01 awards from the National Institutes of Health, and most recently, an AHA Transformational Project Award.  She has over 50 listings on PubMed and is a prominent educator in pediatric emergency medicine.  Dr. Manole is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Pharmacy and Therapeutics, and is an Associate Director, Safar Center. She serves as a mentor of trainees on this T32.

2006-2007

Jennifer L. Arnold, MD, MSc

Dual Mentors: Paul Phrampus, MD and Patrick M. Kochanek, MD

Dr. Arnold completed T32 training in June 2007.  She was our first recruit from Neonatology.  She has had an amazing career. She carried out a trial of the use of simulation training at the Winter Institute for Simulation Education and Research, randomizing members of the pediatric residency to simulation vs conventional training for neonatal intubation.  She received the Ray Helfer award for her work on education research at the 2008 meeting of the APS/SPR.  She has gone on to a storied career including serving on the faculty of the Baylor College of Medicine where she directed the pediatric simulation program in Texas Children’s Newborn Center followed by serving as the Medical Director of the Simulation Center at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.  Currently she is the Program Director in Immersive Design Systems at Boston Children’s Hospital. She has been funded for her simulation educational research through the Laerdal Foundation, the Cullen Trust for Healthcare, Texas Children’s Hospital Educational Grants, and the MD Anderson Foundation, among others. She serves world-wide as an inspirational speaker on overcoming obstacles and been the star of the television program “The Little Couple” on The Learning Channel where she has been a remarkable advocate to raise awareness for the unique challenges of children and families.

2004-2006

Ericka L. Fink, MD, MS

Mentor: Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Fink completed T32 training in June 2006. She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow was highly successful on the T32 studying the impact of therapeutic hypothermia in a pre-clinical pediatric cardiac arrest model. She went on join our faculty in the Department of Critical Care Medicine (CCM) as an Assistant Professor and received a K12 award in preclinical research.  She then transitioned to focus on clinical research studying biomarkers and magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy in pediatric cardiac arrest.  She obtained a K23 award from the NIH to support that work and obtained a Master’s of Clinical Research degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  She has gone on the receive PECORI and R01 awards and is currently a Professor of CCM and Clinical and Translational Science in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, an Association Director of the Safar Center, Director of Research in our Pediatric CCM Division, and Director of the Critical Illness Recovery for ChiLdrEn (CIRCLE) Program, at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She has been a highly successful investigator leading multi-center projects in cerebral resuscitation and rehabilitation of victims of pediatric cardiac arrest and has over 150 listings on PubMed.  She serves as a mentor of trainees on this T32.

Yi-Chen Lai, MD

Mentor: Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Lai completed his training on the T32 in June 2006.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who and was a prolific T32 scholar studying autophagy and poly(-ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) in experimental TBI and using novel proteomic applications in acute brain injury with Dr. Larry Jenkins.  Dr. Lai published a remarkable 14 manuscripts as a fellow including 6 first author repots and won numerous awards.  He joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine as an assistant professor and obtained a K12 and subsequently a K08 award.  For his work at Baylor, he received the 2010 Young Investigator Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine.  He has also received an R21 as principal investigator studying electrocardiographic alterations in pediatric epilepsy.  Dr. Lai is an Associate Professor and Pediatrics-Critical Care Medicine in the Baylor College of Medicine with a special interest in pediatric neurocritical care.  He has over 50 listings on PubMed.

2003-2005

Mandeep Chadha, MD

Mentor: Larry W. Jenkins, PhD

Dr. Chadha completed his training on the T32 in June 2005.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied the application of proteomics to experimental research in ischemia and traumatic brain injury.  He presented his work on proteomics in brain injury at meetings including the NICHD/NCMRR research trainee day where his work was identified as one of the top submissions.  He published manuscripts on his work in Developmental Neuroscience, Brain Research, and the Journal of Neurotrauma.  He also was a postdoctoral scholar in pediatric cardiovascular intensive care at Stanford Medicine.  Dr. Chadha is currently a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco and on the faculty of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.  He has over 20 listings on PubMed including participation on several important reports on lower respiratory illness in critically ill infants and children.

Melinda Fiedor-Hamilton, MD, MSc

Mentor: Ann Thompson, MD

Dr. Fiedor completed T32 training in June of 2005.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked in the field of simulation focusing on initial evaluation of the resuscitation training tool SimBaby.Ò  She obtained a Master’s of Medical Education from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  She also received grants from the US Department of Defense and the Laerdal Foundation to study simulation training in ECMO program development.  Dr. Fiedor joined our faculty as an Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine (CCM) and served for many years as the Fellowship Director in our division.  She is the Director of the Pediatric Simulation Center of UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and has had that role since the Center opened in 2005.  She also serves as co-chair of the UPMC Graduate Medical Education Professional Development subcommittee.   She has also been the site principal investigator for several national educational projects and is in the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.  She is an Associate Director of the Pediatric Multidisciplinary Critical Care Training Program and a Professor of CCM.

2002-2006

Mary Hartman, MD, MPH

Mentor: Derek Angus, MD

Dr. Hartman completed her training on the T32 in June 2006 and obtained an MPH from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health during her training.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied the appropriateness of triage in pediatric traumatic brain injury and published a first author paper on the topic in Pediatrics. She worked as part of Dr. Angus’ CRISMA outcomes group.  She is a well published Health Services Researcher who has participated in numerous important trials in our field with over 60 listings on PubMed. Her paper on trends in the epidemiology of pediatric severe sepsis has been cited over 370 times.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and both the Institute for Public Health and the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

2002-2004

Paul M. Shore, MD, MS

Mentor: Ann Thompson, MD and Patrick Kochanek, MD

Dr. Shore completed his training on the T-32 in June of 2004.   He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked on clinical trials in traumatic brain injury studying cerebrospinal fluid diversion and biochemical mediators. He also completed a Master’s of Clinical Research at the University of Pittsburgh.  He presented at national meetings, received an educational scholarship from Society of Critical Care Medicine, and received the Neuroscience Award at the 2003 WFPICCS Congress. He published six manuscripts during his training and developed the PILOT scale used in several studies to assess therapeutic intensity in pediatric traumatic brain injury. He is on the pediatric intensive care unit faculty and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine and St. Christopher’s Hospital in Philadelphia where he is also the director of performance measurement and improvement.

2001-2003

Yong Yun Han, MD

Mentor: Joseph A. Carcillo, MD and Ian Reynolds, PhD

Dr. Han completed training on the T32 in June of 2003.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who worked in the area of shock (clinical and basic) and studied mitochondrial failure and markers of injury with dual mentorship from Drs. Joseph Carcillo and Ian Reynolds.  He authored eight manuscripts on the T32 including two reports in Pediatrics related to his work on acute care and shock.  His article on implementation of a computerized physician order entry system done as fellow and published in Pediatrics has been cited over 700 times.  He has published over 17 manuscripts and has played a role in the American College of Critical Care Medicine (CCM) Clinical Practice parameters for Hemodynamic Support of Pediatric and Neonatal Septic Shock.  He first joined the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor and now is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, and an attending physician in CCM at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

Trung Nguyen, MD

Mentor: Joseph A. Carcillo, MD

Dr. Nguyen completed training on the T32 in June of 2003.  He was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied microvascular thrombosis in multiple organ failure (MOF) after resuscitation in sepsis, carrying out detailed studies of the coagulation cascade in pediatric MOF.  He evaluated plasma exchange therapy in a positive randomized trial and published the results as first author manuscript in the journal Critical Care Medicine.  He published several other reports and gave seven abstract presentations and received an Educational Scholarship from the Society of Critical Care Medicine.  He was recruited to the Baylor College of Medicine and the division of Pediatric CCM at Texas Children’s Hospital and has been an exceptionally successful faculty member.  Dr. Nguyen received K12 and K08 awards and has been continuously funded by an R01 award from NIH on microvascular thrombosis in systemic inflammation since 2015, along with support from the American Heart Association.  He has over 40 listings on PubMed.

2000-2002

Margaret A. Satchell, MD

Mentor:  Robert S.B. Clark, MD

Dr. Satchell completed her training on the T32 in June 2002.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who studied poly(-ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) in traumatic brain injury in both pre-clinical and clinical investigations in infants and children with severe injury.  During her training she received several research awards including the prestigious Murray Goldstein Award from the National Neurotrauma Society.  She has 30 listings on PubMed, and her manuscript on cytochrome C levels in cerebral spinal fluid in infants with abusive head trauma has been cited over 75 times.  After fellowship she joined the faculty in the Dept. of Pediatrics in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where she was an Assistant Professor in pediatric critical care medicine at the Kravis Children’s Hospital.  Currently, she is the medical director for the pediatric intensive care unit at Logan Health in Montana, which she joined in 2016.  Logan Health features the nation’s first rural air ambulance service (A.L.E.R.T.), which it has maintained for more than 40 years.

Kimberly D. Statler, MD, MPH

Mentor: Patrick M. Kochanek, MD and C. Edward Dixon, PhD

Dr. Statler completed her training on the T32 in June 2002.  She was a pediatric critical care medicine fellow who did research on the effects of anesthetics on pre-clinical traumatic brain injury outcomes.  Dr. Statler received the Women in Neurotrauma award from the National Neurotrauma Society She published seven manuscripts, six as first author during her fellowship training and presented at many conferences. Her work was featured on the cover of Brain Research.  Her collected work on the T32 has been cited over 500 times.  She joined the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor in the division of critical care medicine.  She obtained an MPH degree and a K12 as faculty studying experimental epilepsy in pediatric traumatic brain injury and a career development award from the University of Utah.  She moved to Children’s Hospital of Colorado in Denver in 2014 and is now an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the Medical Director of Pediatric Services in the Denver Hospice.