In Person Lecture: The Joys of Being a Clinician Researcher

About this Seminar

After 3 decades as a neonatologist I am pleased to report that I still love my job, and I think this is in large part because I followed the path of becoming a “Clinician-Researcher”. I always wanted to be a doctor, but only discovered the joys of research during medical school when I did a solid year of bench research which was required at Duke at the time.  I still never imagined I’d do research for a living, but kept an open mind through residency and fellowship. Thanks to some fantastic mentors I ended up doing 16 years of bench research. The term “bench to bedside” truly applied, as I went, sometimes daily, from my lab where I was studying effects of hypothermia in mice and cells, to the Neonatal ICU, where we were cooling babies for neuroprotection. I transitioned from bench to clinical research about a decade ago and currently have several areas of investigation including delivery room resuscitation, apnea of prematurity, and vital sign-based predictive analytics. In this seminar I will discuss my unconventional research path and hope to convince the students that research is not only important but can also be fun.

This is a free event hosted by the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. The Timothy A. Johnson Medical Scholar Lecture Series hosts clinician scientists who are exploring frontiers of medicine. These lectures are principally intended for Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine students and Virginia Tech students in the Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health graduate program. Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic faculty, staff, and students may also attend.