Director, Massachusetts General Hospital Cystic Fibrosis Center
Massachusetts General Hospital
Lael Yonker, MD is a Pediatric Pulmonologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. She is the Director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center, Co-director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Therapeutic Development Center and a Principal Investigator in the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at MassGeneral Hospital for Children. Her research, which is funded by both the National Institute of Health and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, focuses on airway inflammation, specifically interrogating neutrophilic inflammatory responses to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection within the cystic fibrosis airway. Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has led the Pediatric COVID-19 Biorepository at MGH and has helped shape our understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 infection affects newborns, infants, children and adolescents. She is an active member of the CF community and was awarded “Rookie of the Year” by the Massachusetts-Rhode Island chapter of the CFF in 2019 and the “Pillars of Excellence Award” by MassGeneral Brigham for her leadership of the MGH CF Clinical Research team for Advancing innovation and progress. She particularly enjoys participating in the annual Massachusetts Cycle for Life. She is fully committed to advancing the care for individuals with cystic fibrosis.