Dr. DeBaun is an internationally recognized physician-scientist whose advocacy and research have resulted in fundamental advances in medical care of children and adults with sickle cell disease (SCD) and children with Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome, a cancer predisposition syndrome. He is Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Vice Chair of Clinical and Translational Research in the Department of Pediatrics and holds the JC Peterson Endowed Chair at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. After receiving his degrees from Stanford, he completed his pediatric residency, served as chief resident, and completed his pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at St. Louis Children's Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine. He then completed a four-year United States Public Health Service Epidemiology fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During the fellowship he obtained an MPH degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2003). Dr. DeBaun returned to St. Louis and spent 14 years at Washington University School of Medicine where he was promoted to Professor of Pediatrics, Biostatistics, and Neurology, and was the inaugural Ferring Family Chair in Pediatrics. He also received the following Washington University Medical School Awards: Humanism in Medicine Award (2002), Clinical Teacher of the Year Award (2008), and Distinguished Faculty Award (2009). In 2010, Dr. DeBaun was recruited to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine where he founded the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center of Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease. The Center is one of the first in the country to establish a medical home care model for children and adults with SCD in a community health center. For over two decades, Dr. DeBaun has received continuous funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Robert Wood Johnson, Doris Duke and Burroughs Wellcome foundations. Dr. DeBaun was the primary physician author of the Sickle Cell Treatment Act, signed by President Bush into law on Oct. 22, 2004 Title VII, creating regional networks for enhanced services for with SCD. His research efforts in SCD have focused on the clinical epidemiology of acute and chronic lung disease, sequelae of silent and overt strokes, including leading eight investigator-initiated controlled stroke trials in North America, Europe, and Africa. Additionally, in Ghana, he was the leader of multi-disciplinary team decreasing the death rate of pregnant women with SCD by approximately 90% and continues to work with the team at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. His research has expanded to include the clinical history and optimal therapy for recurrent ischemic priapism in men with sickle cell disease living in Nigeria and malnutrition in older children with sickle cell disease living in Nigeria. Dr. DeBaun is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (2006), Association of American Physicians (2008) and National Academy of Medicine (2009). He has received the Ernest Beutler Prize and Lecture in Clinical Science from the American Society of Hematology (2014) and two international mentor awards for his work in Ghana, Nigeria and U.S.: the Maureen Andrews Mentor Award from the Society of Pediatric Research (2017) and the American Society of Hematology Mentor Award (2019).

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Dr. Davis' research is aimed at developing and implementing interventions to reduce health disparities in vulnerable populations of children. Her current research projects explore the relationships between depression, medication adherence, and health outcomes in youth with systemic lupus erythematosus.

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Dr. Cutrer is actively involved in medical student education, overseeing curriculum development, student assessment, and program evaluation in his role as the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education. He is very interested in understanding how students learn in the workplace and how to help them more effectively, including the role of assessment driving learning. He co-leads the AMA's Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative Master Adaptive Learner Working Group and is the leader of the Vanderbilt core team participating in the AAMC pilot project Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency (Core EPAs). Dr. Cutrer is a co-PI on the joint VUMC-UMMC GOLLD project selected for the AMA's Reimagining Residency initiative. Dr. Cutrer is also part of the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine. He has published and presented widely on these topics, including several EPA-focused papers.

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Dr. Crowe is Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, the Ann Scott Carell Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. His laboratory studies the human immune response to infection for a wide variety of major human pathogens, including many emerging infections. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, and other major professional organizations. His work has been recognized by a number of international awards, including the The Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine, the Golden Goose Award, the Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society, the Oswald Avery Award of the IDSA, and the Korsmeyer Award of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. This research group uses a very broad array of techniques including molecular and cellular biology, state-of-the-art imaging and flow cytometry, bioinformatics, and bioengineering approaches to attack scientific problems at the forefront of immunity research. The group has been recognized widely as a leader in antibody sciences, for instance as the Best Academic Research Team, 11th Annual Vaccine Industry Excellence Awards, World Vaccine Congress, recipient of the 2019 Merck Future Insight Prize, and large-scale research grants and contracts from NIH and DoD, including the DARPA Pandemic Prevention Program (P3). His team developed the COVID-19 antibodies on which Evusheld (tixagevimab + cilgavimab) is based.

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Dr. Creech is currently leading studies to determine the optimal duration of therapy for children with pneumonia; to define the immune response to influenza vaccination using a systems vaccinology approach; to define the immune response to S. aureus infections in children and adults; and to compare whole-cell pertussis and acellular pertussis vaccines in children, using ribosome profiling as a transcriptomics tool.

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Dr. Corona's research interests include the developmental, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based practices for individuals with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Past and current research projects include investigation of social skills intervention for adolescents, teacher training on evidence-based practices, and the use of telemedicine tools in early detection of ASD.

Dr. Cooper is an epidemiologist with a research program focused on the effects of medications on vulnerable populations of children and the impact of health care systems on patient outcomes. He has published more than 150 manuscripts describing population-based studies of medication use in children and pregnant women in journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Surgery, and JAMA Psychiatry.

Dr. Cooper’s research has focused on assessing the safety of medications for a variety of vulnerable populations, including studies of adverse fetal outcomes following psychotropic drugs in children and exposures to medications during pregnancy for populations of women in the Tennessee Medicaid program, with studies of ACE inhibitor exposures and cardiac malformations, effects of antibiotics taken during pregnancy, the fetal effects of immunosuppressive medications taken for autoimmune conditions, and work exploring the fetal effects of opioid medications taken during pregnancy. He has also studied health outcomes for vulnerable populations of children with sickle cell disease. More recent work has focused on the intersection of physician professionalism and health outcomes. He has successfully competed for funding to support his research program and has been the principal investigator for 10 federally-funded research projects.

Dr. Cooper's work has influenced policy, including medication labeling by HealthCanada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. By influencing practice in this way, Dr. Cooper's work has reduced the likelihood that children will experience entirely preventable major malformations.

Dr. Cooper has also been a highly effective mentor, having successfully mentored over 30 individuals; many of which currently hold faculty positions and have successfully obtained K and R awards.

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Dr. Connelly joined the Vanderbilt Pediatric Hematology/Oncology program in January 2016 as a member of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant team. Dr. Connelly received his medical degree from Washington University Medical School and performed his pediatric residency and fellowship training at the University of Michigan. He spent his early faculty years at the University of Michigan where he helped develop and direct the Comprehensive Immuno-Hematology Program. Dr. Connelly has extensive expertise in non-malignant transplant and his primary clinical and research interests are in patients with immunologic and bone marrow failure disorders. On a national level, he serves as the research chair for the National Immuno-hematology Clinical Education and Research (NICER) consortium, is a member of the Severe Chronic Neutropenia International Registry (SCNIR) Board where he serves as the primary transplant physician, and is involved with leading research consortia for the development and implementation of safer, more effective transplant strategies for non-malignant disorders. At Vanderbilt, Dr. Connelly manages all non-malignant bone marrow transplants and is the director of the Comprehensive Hematology, Immunology, and Infectious Disease Program (CHIIP). The CHIIP clinic offers care for complex immune disorders and allows patients to receive expertise from multiple sub-specialists including immunology, hematology, infectious disease, and bone marrow transplant during one clinic visit. Through the CHIIP clinic, Dr. Connelly collaborates with clinical and basic science colleagues at Vanderbilt to study pediatric and adult patients with rare conditions of the immune system through the Human Immunology Discovery Initiative (HIDI). This research platform allows Vanderbilt scientists to study how immune cells are impaired in disease and perform extensive genetic analysis to diagnose patients with unknown disorders of the immune system. His additional area of scientific interest is in the development of malignancy in neutropenic disorders and provision of safer transplant strategies for chronic neutropenia and has international collaborations to study these topics. Through these efforts, patients at Vanderbilt have access to science discovery to understand and diagnose their immune system defects and receive state-of-the art treatments including bone marrow transplant for blood and immune disorders.

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Dr. Cogan's lab has studied the molecular basis of genetic disorders for over 30 years examining the causes of disease in a variety of conditions including isolated growth hormone deficiency, combined pituitary hormone deficiency, heritable pulmonary arterial hypertension, and familial interstitial pneumonia. Her current studies are focused on patients with undiagnosed diseases and families with telomere biology disorders.

As part of the Vanderbilt Clinical Undiagnosed Disease Network Site (VCUD), her lab uses whole genome sequencing analysis and other molecular techniques to identify the molecular cause of disease in patients and families that have previously gone undiagnosed. In some cases, new phenotypes are characterized or disease-causing genes are identified. The Cogan lab is also investigating the genetic basis of impaired telomere maintenance in families with Telomere Biology Disorders (TBDs) using telomere measurements and whole exome/genome sequencing analysis.

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Dr. Ellen Clayton is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a founding member of its Standing Committee on Reproductive Health, Equity, and Society. At VUMC, she is a Craig-Weaver Professor of Pediatrics, a Professor of Health Policy, a co-founder of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, and a Professor of Law at Vanderbilt. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the conduct and translation of genomics research into clinical care. She is the co-PI of a transdisciplinary Center for Excellence in ELSI Research focusing on Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings and of a project that seeks to define the legal framework for genomics. In addition, she has been involved in the eMERGE consortium assessing the impact of returning genomic results, and currently working on ethical issues in the development and use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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