Faculty in the Pediatric Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine Division lead and participate in a wide range of research. This research includes laboratory investigations to improve care of pediatric patients who require cardiopulmonary resuscitation, new methods of monitoring autoregulation of blood flow in the brain to improve care of children with moyamoya disease and hypoxic brain injury, mechanisms of neuroinflammation and examination of drug-induced liver injury. Clinical research includes investigations of the role of biomarkers in predicting brain injury in children on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and application of novel techniques to characterize and improve sleep in critically ill children. Research in medical simulation to improve resident and nurse resuscitation skills and to study the role of human factors in cardiopulmonary arrest management is also a major component of the clinical research program. A multidisciplinary group is reviewing the utilization of perioperative blood transfusions for pediatric surgical patients. See our research programs.

Individual faculty research interests include the following:

Melania Maria Bembea, M.D, MPH investigates disturbances in coagulation and incident neurologic injury in children on ECMO using novel plasma brain injury biomarkers and noninvasive monitoring of cerebrovascular autoregulation disturbances.

Nicholas Dalesio, M.D. investigates difficult airway and the perioperative management, including preoperative disposition planning, optimizing intraoperative medication administration and postoperative pain control of patients with obstructive sleep apnea. 

Robert Greenberg, M.D. focuses on innovation development, with particular areas in anesthesia airway device designs, noninvasive fetal monitoring, noninvasive neural blockade monitoring, minimally invasive blood flow measurement in the brain and kidney and informatics and systems logistics.

Sujatha Kannan, M.B.B.S., M.D. investigates the mechanism and progression of the cellular and metabolic derangements leading to brain injury during development, while designing specific targeted therapy using novel nanopolymers.

Rahul Koka, M.D. studies patient safety and anesthesia training in low resource countries.

Sapna Kudchadkar, M.D.  investigates the role of sleep quality and delirium as modulators of outcomes in critically ill children, with a focus on mechanically ventilated children receiving sedative medications.

Alison Miles, D.O. investigates the causes and impact of moral distress in ICU providers.

Corina Noje, M.D, is interested in pediatric transport and neurocritical care research.

Lewis Romer, M.D. is interested in endothelial cell adhesion to matrix, biochemical and mechanical signaling between cells and the microenvironment, regulation of endothelial cell nitric oxide, oxidative injury to vascular endothelium and cytoskeletal biology. Current directions include microvascular tissue engineering and the use of a new transgenic mouse line to develop therapies for pulmonary hypertension.

Hal Shaffner, M.D. is interested in pediatric resuscitation research in both the laboratory and clinical settings. Current projects include ETCO2-directed and physiology-based CPR models. Other interests include neuroresuscitation from traumatic brain injury and cerebral autoregulation.