External Advisory Board

Our External Advisory Board (EAB) plays a vital role in guiding and shaping the direction of the Center for Pediatric IBD & Celiac Disease Research. Composed of esteemed experts in the field, the EAB serves as a key resource and provides invaluable insights and guidance to our center's leadership.

The dedication and expertise of our Advisory Board members are instrumental in shaping the future of pediatric IBD and celiac disease research conducted at Stanford University. Their contributions enable us to make informed decisions, foster collaboration, and drive groundbreaking discoveries. We are immensely grateful for their commitment and support, as their collective wisdom strengthens our center's mission to improve the lives of all children affected by IBD and celiac disease.

Eric Benchimol, MD, PhD

Staff Gastroenterologist, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition

SickKids Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre

Dr. Eric Benchimol is a pediatric gastroenterologist, epidemiologist, and clinician-scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), where he holds the Northbridge Financial Corporation Chair in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. He is a Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto, as well as a Senior Scientist in the Child Health Evaluative Sciences program at the SickKids Research Institute and a Senior Core Scientist at ICES. His clinical specialization is dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment, and comprehensive management of children and adolescents living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Dr. Benchimol utilizes large population-based health administrative datasets to investigate why Canada has some of the highest incidence rates of IBD globally, identify environmental risk factors, and optimize pediatric healthcare delivery systems

Millie Long, MD, MPH

Division Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology

University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Dr. Millie D. Long, MD, MPH, FACG, is an internationally recognized gastroenterologist, clinical epidemiologist, and the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine. Her career bridges clinical practice at the UNC Multidisciplinary Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) Center with clinical research, national leadership, and medical education . A recipient of the 2024 Sherman Prize and the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation’s 2026 Woman of Distinction in Medicine award, Dr. Long serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Gastroenterology and sits on the Board of Trustees for the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG.) Her clinical practice is based at the UNC Multidisciplinary IBD Center, specializing in complex Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and the management of IBD during pregnancy.

Saurabh Mehandru, MD

Professor of Medicine, Gastroenterology

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Saurabh Mehandru, MD, is an internationally recognized physician-scientist, mucosal immunologist, and practicing gastroenterologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He holds dual appointments as Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Professor of Immunology & Immunotherapy. Dr. Mehandru directs the Mehandru Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology and serves as an attending physician at the Mount Sinai Hospital Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center. He provides clinical care to patients with complex gastrointestinal conditions, specializing in Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, refractory diarrhea, and immune-mediated enteropathies at the Mount Sinai IBD Center. In addition to patient care, Dr. Mehandru plays an active role in academic mentorship, serving as core faculty for Mount Sinai’s Gastroenterology Fellowship Program and as an advisor in the MD-PhD training program.

Jocelyn Silvester, MD PhD

Director of Research, Celiac Disease Program

Boston Children's Hospital

Dr. Jocelyn Silvester is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she directs clinical and translational research for the Celiac Disease Program. She is also a core investigator in the Harvard Celiac Research Program. In the clinic, Dr. Silvester cares for pediatric patients with complex gastrointestinal conditions, specializing in non-responsive celiac disease, refractory symptoms on a gluten-free diet, and difficult-to-diagnose enteropathies. Dr. Silvester’s NIH- and foundation-funded research bridges mucosal immunology, clinical epidemiology, and diagnostic test development. Dr. Silvester is a frequent contributor to international clinical guidelines and consensus statements on celiac disease diagnosis and management.

Ivan Zanoni, PhD

Endowed Boston Children's Hospital Chair, Immunology

Boston Children's Hospital

Dr. Ivan Zanoni, PhD, is an internationally recognized immunologist and the Boston Children’s Hospital Chair in the Field of Immunology at Harvard Medical School . He holds dual appointments as a Principal Investigator in the Division of Immunology and the Division of Gastroenterology at Boston Children’s Hospital and serves as core faculty in the Harvard PhD Program in Immunology. Dr. Zanoni’s research investigates the fundamental biology of innate immunity, dissecting how pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), type III interferons, and myeloid cell networks regulate host defense, mucosal inflammation, and tumor development . He is a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease and a Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J. Old STAR Investigator. Dr. Zanoni’s research investigates the fundamental biology of innate immunity, dissecting how pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), type III interferons, and myeloid cell networks regulate host defense, mucosal inflammation, and tumor development.

Past Members

Theresa Alenghat, VMD, PhD

Professor

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Dr. Theresa Alenghat is an Associate Professor in the Immunobiology Division of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center at the University of Cincinnati. She received her veterinary degree and residency training at the University of Pennsylvania and did her PhD and post-doctoral work with Drs. Mitch Lazar and David Artis, respectively. She joined Cincinnati Children’s in 2014 and established a research program to investigate molecular mechanisms that instruct the host-microbiota relationship, and how this level of regulation affects intestinal health, infection, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Dr. Alenghat has pioneered studies revealing that epigenetics and histone deacetylases permit intestinal epithelial cells to sense commensal bacteria and convey this information to the mammalian host. Her lab's work includes investigation into pathways that enable diet and microbiota-derived metabolites to direct epithelial and immune cell homeostasis in mucosal tissues. Her work in this area has been published in multiple high profile journals including Nature, Cell Host and Microbe, and Gastroenterology. Dr. Alenghat is the recipient of awards from the NIH, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, and the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation.

Maria Oliva-Hemker, MD

Vice Dean for Faculty

Stermer Family Professor of Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Division Chief, Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition

Professor of Pediatrics

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Dr. Maria M. Oliva-Hemker is the Stermer Family Professor of Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include gastrointestinal diseases, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and pediatric gastroenterology. She serves as the chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. In 1998, she launched the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center at Johns Hopkins, which specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of hundreds of children and teens with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis from all over the world. Dr. Oliva-Hemker is an active clinical researcher who has co-authored more than 100 articles and book chapters and has given more than 100 invited talks nationally and internationally. She has served on multiple editorial boards and organizational leadership positions including the Subboard of Pediatric Gastroenterology of the American Board of Pediatrics and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) Board of Trustees, and the editorial board for the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. She is Co-Chair of the IBD Education Campaign for the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN) Foundation. Her clinical practice focuses on inflammatory intestinal disorders such as IBD, autoimmune enteropathy, celiac disease and eosinophilic gastroenteritis. However, she also sees children with a wide variety of gastrointestinal symptoms and concerns. Dr. Oliva-Hemker actively teaches medical students, residents, and fellows. In addition to her outpatient clinics, she routinely performs a variety of endoscopic procedures and attends on the inpatient and consultation pediatric gastroenterology services.

Michael Kappelman, MD, MPH

Professor, Pediatric Gastroenterology

Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health

University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Dr. Kappelman is a pediatric gastroenterologist whose research interests focus on using real-world data to 1) define the burden of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (prevalence, costs, healthcare utilization, quality of life, disease complications), 2) elucidate the risk factors for developing IBD, 3) study the safety, effectiveness, and comparative effectiveness of different treatment options, and 4) measure and improve the quality of care delivered to this patient population. Dr. Kappelman collaborates with colleagues across UNC’s campus, nationally, and internationally. Many of these collaborations have led to multi-center observational clinical and translational studies, for which he has served as a co-investigator or UNC site PI. In addition to observational studies, Dr. Kappelman has also led interventional clinical trials, including serving as PI for a PCORI-funded large pragmatic clinical trial to compare the effectiveness of anti-TNF monotherapy versus combination therapy with oral methotrexate. His future research plans include continuing independent and collaborative patient-oriented and translational research in the area of IBD, including 1) integrating real-world data across various sources (administrative, electronic health record, clinical registry, and patient-reported), 2) conducting observational and interventional studies of the clinical and comparative effectiveness and safety of existing and emerging therapeutic strategies, and 3) collaborating with basic researchers to design studies that capitalize on this infrastructure to support translational research.

Aleixo Muise, MD, PhD, FRCPC

Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Professor, Department of Paediatrics and Biochemistry

Co-Director, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Centre

University of Toronto

The Hospital for Sick Children

Dr. Aleixo Muise is a leader in the development of precision medicine to treat children diagnosed under six years of age with very early onset inflammatory bowel disease (VEOIBD) and intestinal diseases. Dr. Muise established the world’s first multidisciplinary clinic focused exclusively on VEOIBD at SickKids. He developed the interNational Early Onset Pediatric IBD Cohort Study (NEOPICS) , as well as co-founded and co-directs the international VEOIBD Consortium and the PEDIatric COngenital Diarrhea and Enteropathy Consortia study (PEDICODE). Dr. Muise also hosts an international training program for postdoctoral fellows (MD and PhD). These fellows visit his clinic and lab to study novel and known genes in IBD patients. Dr. Muise’s research lab conducts translational research to identify and understand the causes of very early onset intestinal disease in children. His research has made it possible for many young children across Canada and internationally to receive appropriate, personalized treatment, including nutritional therapy and stem cell transplant. These discoveries have had a major impact on the clinical care of many patients and will fundamentally change the way that children are treated with both rare and common forms of intestinal disease. The Muise Lab routinely performs whole exome sequencing (WES) or whole genome sequencing (WGS) to screen young children with intestinal disease for known and novel genetic variants. Results are then analyzed using a searchable database to enable rapid understanding of causal, risk, modifying, and treatment-specific genes associated with these diseases. High-throughput screening (HTS) is also used to search for existing and new therapies that may target a specific gene or pathway. Dr. Muise partners with numerous clinicians and researchers worldwide to identify additional rare disease patients, accelerate research and disease modelling, and promote advanced academic training. This has led to large scale funding and industry partnerships that make his lab an international leader in the study of paediatric gastrointestinal diseases.