Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
I received my undergraduate education at Boston College and received a B.S. degree in biochemistry in 1993. I completed my graduate studies on cell physiology and defended my thesis in 1998 and received my Ph.D. degree in January of 1999 from Case Western Reserve University. Following my postdoctoral training at the Department of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University, I began a year-long externship at the Cleveland Clinic Proteomic Facility in 2002. In 2004, I joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University Department of Pediatrics as Assistant Professor. My laboratory focuses on the differential regulation of Nrf2 signaling pathways in the inflammatory lung disease observed in cystic fibrosis, the development and characterization of nucleic acid nanoparticles for delivery to the lung, liver, and brain, and proteomic analyses for biomarker discovery and disease pathway analysis. My research has been supported by the State of Ohio, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. In 2011, I joined the faculty at the Emory University Department of Pediatrics as an associate professor and served as the Associate Director of Cystic Fibrosis Basic & Translational Research. In 2014, I was recruited by the CF program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where I joined the faculty as Associate Professor of Pediatrics. In 2021 I was offered and accepted a primary appointment as tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immunodeficiency. I am a member of the CF Foundation’s Biomarker Consortium and CF Related Liver Disease Network, as well as the Nanoagents and Synthetic Formulations Committee of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, and I have and currently serve on NIH study sections. I am lead inventor on 2 granted patents (USA) pertaining to targeting DNA nanoparticles, 2 recent granted patents pertaining to prediction of lung function decline and enhancing gene transfer, and 11 provisional patents on gene therapy or biomarkers of disease progression. In the past 16 years, I have authored 43 manuscripts and 7 book chapters, have an h-index of 26, and have been invited to present 48 talks on my work at national and international conferences, and institutions.