Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD	B.A.	12/2009	Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
University of Illinois, Chicago, IL	M.D., Ph.D.	05/2017	Medicine and Pharmacology
University of Colorado , Aurora, CO	Resident	06/2019	Internal Medicine
University of Colorado, Aurora, CO	Fellow	06/2022	Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Harvard University , Boston, MA	Fellow		Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

I am a Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellow at Massachusetts General hospital working in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Schmidt. My main scientific interest is in the development and implementation of personalized medicine in the ICU. During my clinical training, I have observed significant heterogeneity in ARDS, and other critical illnesses; however, patient care in the ICU remains largely supportive. I plan to focus my career on identifying biomarkers that can be used to both identify mechanisms of injury and predict response to pharmacotherapies, so that targeted therapies can be applied to the patients who are most likely to derive benefit. My current research employs heat moisture exchange filters, devices that are routinely used to humidify the airways of mechanically ventilated patients, to noninvasively sample the airspace fluid of ARDS patients. My work identified a subgroup of ARDS patients who display damage to the alveolar epithelial glycocalyx, a layer of glycosaminoglycans that lines the airways. These patients display worse lung injury and require a longer duration of ventilator support than those without significant glycocalyx degradation. Through complementary mechanistic studies, I found that alveolar epithelial glycocalyx degradation induces lung injury by impairing surfactant function.

• ARDS, Human
• Sepsis
• Pneumonia
• Glycocalyx
• Vascular Endothelium
• Epithelial Cells
• Critical Care
• Pulmonary Inflammation