Behavioral health integration, suicide prevention, integration of social care into health systems
1) develop, test, adapt, and refine evidence-based preventive interventions that improve child, adolescent, and family well-being, with a particular focus on reducing youth suicide prevention in settings across the entire health care continuum, and 2) leverage the EHR as a tool to both detect unmet social and behavioral health needs and evaluate the impact of evidence-based social care and behavioral health interventions on youth health outcomes.
Research on coma and consciousness
Interested in how the brain sustains consciousness, the pathophysiology of coma, the prediction of recovery after brain injury, neuroimaging, philosophy of mind, or the ethics surrounding any of these issues? The Recovery of Consciousness Via Evidence-Based Medicine and Research (RECOVER) Program is a unique initiative at Penn that integrates clinical care and research for patients in coma.
Head and Neck Paragangliomas
Head and neck paragangliomas are rare tumors with high rates of germline mutations. We are building a REDCAP database of a cohort of patients with head and neck paraganglioma and performing retrospective analysis of the cohort. We need help on data entry and verification. Data management and statistical analysis skills are helpful but not required.
Pediatric Urology
As a pediatric urologist I focus on treating anomalies of the urinary tract in children. I personally have a specific research focus on hypospadias (disorder where the urethra is ectopic) and bladder exstrophy (bladder is born open and outside the body). I welcome anyone to come join our research team and become amazed with what we do in pediatric urology.
Developing tools for deep-dive evaluation of data types
Director of the ITMAT Bioinformatics Laboratory. We do methods development, methods benchmarking and collaborative data analyses with emphasis on RNA and RNA sequencing and also circadian biology.
Studying the dialogue between the microbiome and the immune system
Our lab studies the effect of the microbiome on the immune system in health, disease and therapy.
Research in Reproductive Immunology
We study how inflammation in the uterus helps the embryo to implant and develop its placenta.
Genome engineering of human induced pluripotent stem cells to study blood disorders
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state that allows them to differentiate into any cell type. The ability to genetically engineer iPSCs is essential for generating tools to study human diseases and biological processes.
Models of Genetic Neurodevelopmental Disorders
My lab studies rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorders that disrupt glycosylation (the enzyme-mediated process by which a carbohydrate, or “glycan”, is covalently attached to a target macromolecule) known as Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation, or CDG. In the nervous system, key proteins involved in neurotransmitter release, neuronal cell signaling, and cellular migration events are glycosylated, yet our understanding of the role of glycosylation in these processes is rudimentary. The scholar will use model systems (primary cells, iPSCs, mouse), a variety of molecular and cell biology techniques, and glycoproteomics to study glycosylation in the brain.