May 2, 2023

The Stanford DOM recently announced Drs. Kristina Kudelko and Pedram Fatehi were given important new leadership roles. The PACCM division is so proud of them both for achieving the distinction of these roles. Here is the announcement from the DOM.

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"Kristina Kudelko, MD has accepted the position of Associate Chair – Academic Affairs/CE in the Department of Medicine effective May 1, 2023. As our clinician educator faculty line has grown in numbers and complexity, we believe it is important to dedicate resources and provide support to their growth, advancement, and promotion and we are excited to welcome Dr. Kudelko to this new leadership position. She will work closely with Sean Wu, MD, PhD, and Andy Hoffman, MD, and the team in Faculty Affairs.  Kudelko is a clinical professor of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine. She serves as an attending on the pulmonary hypertension (PH) service and in the PH clinic. She is also a well-regarded teacher and clinical researcher.

Since 2020, Kudelko has served as co-chair of the Clinical Educator Advisory Council in the Department of Medicine where she has guided several ideas to implementation, including a new onboarding web site, development of a standardized professional development allowance for CEs, and implementation of a pilot research grant program. She is looking forward to sharing her experiences moving through the ranks at Stanford and providing guidance and support to her faculty colleagues.

Kudelko earned her BS in biology from Yale, and her MD from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her residency in internal medicine and her fellowship in pulmonary and critical care at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell and completed a clinical fellowship in pulmonary vascular disease in the Wall Center at Stanford. She joined the faculty in 2011.

Pedram Fatehi, MD, MPH has accepted the position of Vice Chair – Education in the Department of Medicine, effective May 1, 2023. Fatehi is a clinical associate professor of nephrology and, by courtesy, of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine. He is board certified in both nephrology and critical care and has engaged in significant teaching across both specialties. As a faculty member at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) prior to joining Stanford, he lectured large group classes and led small group sessions for preclinical medical students in physiology, pharmacology, and clinical reasoning while participating in the Teach for UCSF Certificate Program. After moving to Stanford in 2014, Fatehi began lecturing for preclinical medical students and completed the E4C Associates Program workshop curriculum. Eight years later, he continues to lecture students in their first two years of medical school, in both the cardiovascular and renal blocks.

Fatehi has completed additional educational training via courses and workshops offered at the Faculty Development Center for Medical Teachers and on the undergraduate campus at the Course Design Institute and the Center for Teaching and Learning. As a prior fellowship program director, and as current director of education in nephrology, Fatehi has been integral in all aspects of teaching, mentoring, and leading nephrology trainees. A frequent winner of the Nephrology Teaching Award, he has also been deeply involved in teaching in the ICU through his joint appointment with pulmonary, where he has been supervising bedside education for clerks (MS4s), residents, and fellows from the departments of medicine, anesthesia, emergency medicine, and neurology. As vice chair, Fatehi will expand and create opportunities for teaching across our faculty. He is inspired to create more “team teaching” possibilities.

Fatehi earned his BA from the University of Texas at Austin, his MPH from the Yale School of Public Health, and his MD from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He completed his internship, residency, and fellowship in nephrology at New York Presbyterian/Columbia. He completed his critical care medicine fellowship at UCSF, where he also served on the faculty for several years before joining Stanford."

April 12, 2023

Congratulations to Dr. Solmaz Ehteshami-Afshar, second year PCCM fellow, on receiving the 2023-2024 American Thoracic Society (ATS) Academic Sleep Pulmonary Integrated Research/Clinical Fellowship (ASPIRE).  

The ASPIRE fellowship is a prestigious training program designed to develop the next generation of pulmonary & sleep physician-scientists and leaders. The program includes a collaboration between ATS and several outstanding institutions that have strong Pulmonary/Critical Care/Sleep training programs (University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University, Case Western Reserve University, and UC San Diego Health System).  Solmaz will be conducting research on noninvasive ventilation variables and outcomes in patients with ALS.  She will be co-mentored by Dr. Mark Nicolls, Dr. Emmanuel Mignot (Division of Sleep Medicine), and Dr. Michelle Cao.  We greatly appreciate the leadership of Drs. Michelle Cao and Gaurav Singh - for their guidance and advocacy of sleep-oriented physicians within our division. Please congratulate Solmaz when you see her!

March 22, 2023

A worldwide team of medical scientists will convene April 13-14 on Stanford campus to apply lessons learned from the Aminorex epidemic during a two-day Drug-induced Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium. Featuring Roham Zamanian.

Drug-induced Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium

March 8, 2023

A big congratulations to Katharina Schimmel, PhD for being awarded a prestigious Parker B. Francis Fellowship for her application “Pulmonary Arteriovenous Malformations in Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT).

Katharina is mentored by our own Edda Spiekerkoetter and will be studying the role of somatic mutations as well as second pathogenic rare germline variants of HHT and non-HHT genes that increase the risk of AVM development in the lung and brain. 

Katharina will be co-mentored by Mark Nicolls and Alokkumar Jha (Weill Cornell) and her collaborators are Evan Brittain (Vanderbilt), Karin Tran-Lundmark (Lund University, Sweden), and Gary Steinberg (Stanford).

January 11, 2023

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Alicia Mirza is joining PACCM this month as the Associate Program Director of Cystic Fibrosis. She is returning after two years away at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center as a PCCM attending. Many of you are familiar with Alicia's accomplishments and strengths during her PCCM fellowship, including her role as chief fellow year at Stanford. We look forward to benefitting from her leadership skills working with Dr. Paul Mohabir, Director of CF, and all the staff to advance the program missions.

Alicia is board-certified in both adult and pediatric medicine, completing her IM and Peds residency at UCLA in 2017. She joined Stanford PCCM fellowship and graduated in 2020. She was then recruited to Kaiser Permanente and served with distinction during the early and ongoing phases of the Pandemic. The PACCM leadership remained in close contact with Alicia during the past two years and are grateful to recruit her back to the Farm.  

Along with her leadership role in CF, she will also work with our pediatric pulmonary colleagues to improve the clinical management of pediatric patients transitioning to adulthood. Alicia also has particular interests to care for patients with cerebral palsy, among other conditions. Alicia will work collaboratively with the home ventilation program led by Dr. Michelle Cao.  She will spend her time in Palo Alto, as well as in the East Bay with the expansion of Emeryville Outpatient Center, and the expanding ValleyCare pulmonary and ICU group.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Laveena Chhatwanni for her work and leadership as the APD of the CF over the years, as she will also be advancing to her roles in the lung transplant program working with Dr. Gundeep Dhillon and all the members of the team.   

January 11, 2023

January 11, 2023

Register today - Cone Beam CT in Advanced Bronchosopy

December 5, 2022

In mid-November, we carried out the first-ever pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE) surgery in Stanford Health Care history for a patient with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).  The patient recovered well and was successfully discharged home in time to spend Thanksgiving with family.  Most importantly, our patient’s exercise tolerance and oxygen dependence substantially improved at discharge.

Over the past year, we have assembled a multidisciplinary team across Pulmonary Hypertension, Cardiovascular Surgery, Cardiovascular Anesthesiology, Interventional Cardiology, and Radiology programs to evaluate and treat patients with CTEPH.  We have worked diligently to put in place protocols and practice patterns to create a successful PTE surgery program.  So far, we have evaluated more than a dozen patients with CTEPH and selected the best surgical candidates.  Currently, we are the only program in Northern California to offer PTE Surgery.  As an offshoot of this program, we have already performed pulmonary artery reconstruction surgeries on three patients with severe PAH and PA aneurysms and are in the process of establishing a formal Balloon Pulmonary Angioplasty sub-program in collaboration with Interventional Cardiology.  

The Stanford CTEPH team is a truly collaborative effort and is comprised of the faculty shown to the left.

We would also like to acknowledge the hard work of the following team members whose contributions were instrumental in building the program: Rita Lee, Stacey Tullis, Elizabeth Augustine, Thomas Ford, R.J. Cerna, Amber Smith, Aileen Lin, and Juliana Liu. 

Our immediate goals are to work with the SHC community and referring physicians to grow the program, develop new surgical/interventional techniques, and foster a clinical academic research environment. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like any more information regarding the CTEPH program or to refer a patient.

October 20, 2022

The DOM Annual Report was just released and features a nice story about some (not all!) of the great women leaders in our division.

Please check it out when you get a chance.

https://medicine2022report.stanford.edu/2022-annual-report/women-take-the-lead-in-pulmonary-critical-care-medicine

October 19, 2022

We are happy to announce that Dr. Roham Zamanian, Medical Director of the Stanford Pulmonary Hypertension Program, will be our Team Science Representative for our Division. Roham is an internationally recognized leader in translational research for pulmonary vascular disease. The DOM is sponsoring this major initiative to foster team science which will reach across divisional boundaries to create impactful group studies and grant proposals. As this initiative builds and starts to take shape, we will be reaching out for your participation in evolving efforts. This will ultimately become a great way for clinician educators to participate in and lead group research efforts. An upcoming Team Science Retreat will help frame the emerging organization and promises to be an exciting launch that should positively impact many of you in the upcoming years. A big congratulations to Roham on his new leadership role!

September 1, 2022

We are happy to announce a major publication and new leadership position for Dr. Angela Rogers.  She has authored a study evaluating the association of a biomarker with clinical outcomes in COVID-19 and has been named the Director of the new Critical Care Medicine Research Program in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.

The paper, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Impact Factor: 52), evaluated 2540 subjects at 114 centers in 10 countries. The objective of the study was to determine whether levels of plasma SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) antigen can predict short-term clinical outcomes and identify clinical and viral factors associated with plasma antigen levels in hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2. The paper concludes that elevated plasma antigen is highly associated with both severity of pulmonary illness and clinically important patient outcomes. While the simplified concept of COVID pathogenesis suggests it’s the virus that matters early in outpatients and in hospitalized patients what matters is inflammation,  this data supports an important role of ongoing viral replication in a subset of hospitalized patients.  This subset could be enrolled in future anti-viral clinical trials in COVID-19.  Understanding the biologic heterogeneity of critical illness has been the focus of her entire research career. 

This publication arrives at a timely moment for Dr. Rogers. As many of you know, Angela has had important leadership roles in the Division, the Department, the hospital, and at the national level. She is the Associate Program Director for both the PCCM Fellowship and Internal Medicine Residency. She is a clinically active MICU attending and was instrumental in helping lead Stanford's response to the pandemic, heading a Stanford task force that developed guidelines for the care of COVID-19 patients. For her pivotal work and clinical excellence, she was named SHC's Physician of the Year in 2021. More recently, Dr. Rogers was elected Chair of the Allergy, Immunology, and Inflammation for the American Thoracic Society (2022-2023). For years, she has led an NIH-funded translational research group focused on critical care medicine research. In wide-ranging conversations across Departments, we have recognized the need to increase the connectivity of investigators in critical care medicine research. Accordingly, Angela will assume the role of the Director of the DOM Critical Care Medicine Research Program. 

In this role, Dr. Rogers will design, implement, and lead an interdisciplinary team of critical care investigators, helping to direct and lead collaborative Stanford-based and extramural CCM grant proposals. This leadership position dovetails with the DOM's major effort in 2022-23 to build team science among our medicine divisions.  She will also continue in this role to work with outstanding colleagues across other departments in our multidisciplinary ICU. Please congratulate Angela for both her impactful paper and this leadership role in this exciting new research program when you see her.

https://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M22-0924

August 29, 2022

A big congratulations to Dr. Anna Arroyo, the Clinical Chief of Allergy at Stanford and Medical Director, Allergy, Asthma, & Immunodeficiency Clinic for winning the 2022 Department of Medicine Chair Diversity Investigator Award. 

 Her proposal addresses the social determinants of health and asthma outcomes among the Asian-American population. As the recipient of this award, Anna will present her research findings to the Stanford community and to wider audiences including a presentation of her preliminary findings/interim data at a Medicine Grand Rounds in the fall of 2023.  Beyond the award period, as a Department of Medicine Chair Diversity Investigator Fellow, she will be part of the Diversity & Inclusion Research network, a special circle of distinguished researchers making significant contributions to health disparities and health outcomes. 

August 24, 2022

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Joon Chang will be joining the Interventional Pulmonology Program in September 2022. Dr. Chang recently completed his IP training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest and most preeminent programs in the country. He will be a key member of the program which is thriving under the direction of Dr. Harmeet Bedi; he will work alongside Drs. Brian Shaller, Meghan Ramsey, Arthur, and our wonderful IP Staff.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins with a degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a music minor followed by medical school at UCLA while also serving as the music coordinator of the Acapella group, the GeffeNotes. He went to NYU for internal medicine residency followed by PCCM training at Stanford. He looks forward to continuing clinical research which focuses on airway sampling in infection, pleural disease, and DEI issues in PCCM. 

Stanford has gained national prominence in the IP program which Joon will help build further with cone beam CT navigation and robotic bronchoscopy. Our ability to have access to these state-of-the-art technologies will facilitate top patient care.  The partnership with Dr. Sam Wald (VP of Perioperative and Interventional platforms) and support from the leaders of Cancer and Transplant Destination Services Lines,\ have been tremendously supportive in this process. Joon will also be a key mentor with our new IP fellowship, assisting East Bay efforts, including critical care medicine at ValleyCare Hospital.

August 17, 2022

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Deborah Levine, Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Dr. Amit Banga, an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern to our Stanford PACCM Division Faculty.

Deb has an international reputation in the fields of lung transplantation and pulmonary hypertension.  Dr. Levine has been instrumental in developing international guidelines for defining, diagnosing, and managing antibody-mediated rejection after lung transplantation. She also studies lung allograft monitoring using novel biomarkers such as donor-derived cell-free DNA, a technique pioneered at Stanford. Additionally, she will be the Director of Outreach for the Lung Transplant Program. Dr. Levine looks forward to developing a strong relationship with our pulmonary hypertension program and The Wall Center. She is an outstanding educator

Amit has an international reputation in the field of lung transplantation. He has been recognized as an outstanding clinician and clinical researcher. Dr. Banga's scholarship focuses on donor optimization and utilization for lung transplants. In addition, he will resume his study of post-lung transplant complications and outcomes. In collaboration with surgical medical directors, Dr. Banga will assist with the development of an advanced lung rescue service. The primary focus will be on the expansion of the VV-ECMO service for lung transplantation. He will also assist with the lung transplantation program’s current efforts to grow outreach clinics in underserved areas of California, Nevada, and Oregon.

As many of you know, the lung transplant program has been exceptionally busy - our attendings have been working their fingers to the bone! The welcome addition of such experienced clinician-scholars will greatly contribute to the strong transplant culture which has been historically strong at Stanford for over 50 years after Norm Shumway performed the first adult human-to-human heart transplant in the United States on January 6, 1968. Later, Stanford cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Bruce Reitz performed the world’s first successful heart-lung transplant on March 9, 1981,

Our lung transplant program is doing well and is growing. Led by Drs. Gundeep Dhillon (Medical Director) and J.W. MacArthur (Surgical Director), we have an excellent partnership with our CV Surgical colleagues.  Our most recent statistics show that we have the highest observed graft and patient survival outcomes in California and 4^th in the nation among other adult lung transplant programs. Our heart-lung transplant program continues to transplant the highest number of heart-lung transplants in the U.S. (with good outcomes). We greatly appreciate this partnership as well as those of our critical care medicine teams who help care for these patients.

Please welcome Deb and Amit when you see them!

August 16, 2022

A big congratulations to Dr. Vinicio de Jesus Perez for a $3.5M award funding the renewal of his R01 grant evaluating the role that specialized blood vessel cells, known as 'pericytes', in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). 

 Vinicio's team will also study how pericytes in the heart contribute to right ventricular adaptation in response to PAH.   This multi-disciplinary project involves colleagues from Stanford and other institutions in the US, Canada, and Europe.  Their goal is to use this information to guide therapeutic interventions for this frequently lethal disease.

 Please congratulate Vinicio and his team when you see him!

August 8, 2022

The PACCM division is happy to announce that our group was just awarded one of eight NIH Lung Transplant Consortium Center grants in the country; this award will provide five years of funding, with possible renewal. The Stanford group with collaborators will study the impaired vaccination responses of lung transplant recipients. Understanding the deficits of vaccine responses in immunocompromised patients will foster the development of improved vaccine design, adjuvants, and administration protocols. Our Clinical Center status will allow us to participate in one of the most important NIH initiatives for lung transplant research in decades. This award includes a base $2.13M fund to help support basic studies of our Center with our two partner sites at Inova-Fairfax in Maryland and Houston-Methodist in Texas with significantly more funding opportunities anticipated as pilot grants through the consortium are solicited.

Each of the eight Clinical Centers has their own theme and will participate in a national centralized biorepository and a Data Coordination Center. A unique feature of the consortium is the promotion of frontline clinicians and surgeons as members of a national steering committee. Here, Dr. Gundeep Dhillon (Medical Director of the Lung Transplant Program) and Dr. J.W. MacArthur (Surgical Director) will be the Voting Members of the National Steering Committee representing Stanford/Inova/Houston and will help shape the future of lung transplant research in the years ahead. We are thrilled to partner with Professor Bali Pulendran, the Stanford investigator who developed the field of System Vaccinology. Bali will be giving the inaugural Pulmonary Grand Rounds this year on September 9th, 2022.

Other big acknowledgments: our site PIs Drs. Steve Nathan/Shambhu Aryal (Inova-Fairfax) and Howard Huang (Houston-Methodist),  Holden Maecker, Stanford Human Immune Monitoring Center, Hannah Valantine who is supporting team science at Stanford, and finally to our own Amy Tian who was central to the writing and organization of this grant application.

This will be a great opportunity for Stanford investigators to collaborate across medical and surgical disciplines, to submit new pilot grants and to gain access to a national network of highly-phenotyped tissue for science that benefits the lives of transplant patients.

August 1, 2022

A big shout out to Dr. Andrea Jonas for publishing a timely review in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) on vaping. The BMJ is one of the most widely read general medical journals in the world (Impact Factor: 93.33).

 And the full-text pdf link:

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/378/bmj-2021-065997.full.pdf

July 26, 2022

The U.S. News and World Report rankings were released, and pulmonology and lung surgery continue to rise in the rankings, going from #12 to #11 this year.

We want to acknowledge the phenomenal job that you and our Stanford colleagues in related disciplines are doing.

Our colleagues in Pediatric Pulmonology & Lung Surgery continue to perform as one of the top-ranked groups in the country (#5).

Congratulations to all the fellows, faculty and staff who have worked together to forge such great divisions in PACCM and Thoracic Surgery!

Stanford Health Care ranked #10 (up from #12), as well, so another banner year for SHC.

Here's a list of the ranked pulmonology and lung surgery hospitals for 2022-2023:
#1. Mayo Clinic
#2. National Jewish Health, Denver-University of Colorado
#3. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
#4. NYU Langone
#5. UCLA
#6. Cleveland Clinic
#7. Johns Hopkins
#8. Penn
#9. UCSF
#10. UC San Diego
#11. Stanford
#11. New York-Presbytarian-Columbia Cornell
#13. Northwestern
#14. North Shore
#14. Mayo Clinic-Phoenix
#16. Mass General
#17. Mount Sinai
#18. Houston Methodist
#18. Vanderbilt
#20. Rush
#21. UT Southwestern
#22. Memorial Sloan Kettering
#22. Michigan
#24. Brigham and Women's
#25. Wash U
#25. USC
#27. UC Davis
#28. Northwestern - Lake Forest
#29. Pitt
#30. Yale
#31. Duke
#32. Kansas
#33. Beaumont
#34. Lenox Hill
#35. Ohio State
#36. John Muir Health - Walnut Creek
#37. Mayo Clinic - Jacksonville
#38. University of Chicago
#38. MD Anderson
#40. Advocate Lutheran
#41. Loma Linda
#41. Long Island Jewish
#43. Oregon Health Sciences (OHSU)
#44. CentraCare-St. Cloud
#45. Huntington
#45. Sharp
#47. Thomas Jefferson
#48. University of Florida - Gainesville
#49. Tampa General
#50. Alabama

July 22, 2022

It is a distinct pleasure to announce that Dr. Raquel Lynn will be joining our PACCM Division as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine.  Following her PCCM fellowship,  Raquel was most recently the eBay Fellow in Pulmonary Vascular Diseases.  Raquel will be an active member of our adult pulmonary hypertension (PH) program, participating in on the clinical inpatient service, in the cardiac catheterization laboratory as a procedural attending, and expanding the scope of the PH program to the Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare campus.  She will help Dr. Yon Sung co-direct the newly established Stanford chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH)/pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE) program that will provide a surgical and interventional platform for patients with chronic thromboembolic disease.

Please join us in welcoming Raquel to the PACCM family!

May 20, 2022

The PACCM division wants to share the good news that two of our faculty were elected to leadership roles in ATS:  Vinicio de Jesus Perez was elected chair of the Pulmonary Hypertension Assembly and Angela Rogers was elected chair of Allergy, Immunology, and Inflammation.  In addition to leading their assemblies, in these roles,  both will serve as members of the ATS board of directors for three years.  It's delighful to see Stanford faculty helping lead our society.  Congrats to Angela and Vinicio!

May 12, 2022

We are excited to announce that Drs. Andrew Moore, PCCM fellow in the PACCM division and Dr. Pablo Sanchez, cardiology fellow will be the next physician-scientists to join the T-32 funded, Stanford Pulmonary Biology Training Program. 

With the addition of Drs. Sanchez and Moore, we continue to build our community of invested, intellectually-engaged pulmonary physician-scientists. Dr. Moore will be studying multi-omic endotyping of ARDS and sepsis working under the mentorship of Dr. Purvesh Khatri and Dr. Angela Rogers. Dr. Sanchez will be examining RV dysfunction in ARDS, training with Dr. Angela Rogers and Drs. Euan Ashley and Francois Haddad. We are delighted to welcome these new scholars and their mentors into the Stanford Pulmonary Biology Training community! 

March 14, 2022

We are excited to announce that Dr. Brian Shaller has been voted the 2021 PACCM Teaching Award Winner - a big achievement considering the large faculty size of our division and the considerable number of outstanding educators. Brian will be awarded $5,000 and honored with other Divisional winners in the DOM. Brian is consistently viewed as an educator and clinician par excellence. Trainees are universally impressed by his technical skills, deep knowledge base, and humble bearing.

Brian is originally from NYC and went to medical school at Albert Einstein School of Medicine. He completed both his medicine residency and PCCM fellowship at Stanford.  He pursued interventional pulmonology training at the Cleveland Clinics program and returned as faculty to Stanford in August of 2020. Brian was instrumental in initiating our newly inaugurated Interventional Pulmonology Fellowship Program. We are super proud to have him in our ranks. A big congratulations for this well-deserved honor, Brian!

March 10, 2022

We are very excited to announce that two of our PCCM fellows, Solmaz Afshar and Landy Luna Diaz, have been accepted to the ACGME Advancing Innovation in Residency Education (AIRE) - Sleep Medicine program, sponsored by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). This pilot initiative was created by ACGME to catalyze innovations in graduate medical education and improve barriers to sleep medicine training. We are thrilled to be able to provide this rare opportunity to our fellows with a strong interest in pursuing sleep medicine as part of their career trajectory.  

In close collaboration with Stanford's world-renowned Division of Sleep Medicine, Solmaz and Landy will complete comprehensive sleep medicine fellowship training along with special focus on pulmonary and sleep disorders within three years of PCCM fellowship. At completion of training both fellows will be eligible for sleep medicine board certification.  Solmaz and Landy will be mentored and supervised by our own faculty programmatic leads Michelle Cao and Gaurav Singh, who are board certified in sleep medicine.  We view this opportunity as a testament to the Division's commitment towards educational opportunities and supporting personalized career pathways for our fellows.  We are grateful and proud of Michelle and Gaurav for organizing this new initiative for Stanford. Please congratulate Solmaz and Landy, our inaugural fellows, when you have the opportunity.

March 10, 2022

A big congratulations to Dr. Vinicio de Jesus Perez and his research team for receiving a $3M NIH R01 grant evaluating the pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). In their original R01, his team confirmed a key role for the Wnt7a/ROR2 signaling pathway in lung angiogenesis and how the loss of this mechanism is a feature of PAH vascular pathology.  

The renewal grant will focus on elucidating the transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms governing the behavior of diseased endothelial cells with implications for how the right ventricle adapts in this lethal condition. Excellent news and great work, Vinicio and team!

February 11, 2022

It is the PACCM division’s great pleasure to announce that Adam Andruska has been selected as a 2022 Parker B. Francis Fellow for his research under the mentorship of Edda Spiekerkoetter. Adam will be continuing his investigations into the pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension in Edda’s lab and co-mentored by Maya Kumar.

The PBF is a prestigious honor and award for which Adam is incredibly deserving, and is a testament to his perseverence over the years. We’re very proud of and happy for him.

February 9, 2022

Please consider attending this year's CTS Annual Educational Conference. This is one of the best programs that we have seen for this meeting. With subjects ranging from post-ICU care, modes of ventilation and proning, hands-on sessions with ventilators/oxygen delivery devices/neural triggering for OSA, lung cancer, sleep disorders, climate change/environmental pollution, pandemic career development/wellness, and women in PCCM/Sleep medicine, this program offers something for everyone - and will occur in the lovely Portola Hotel and Spa in Monterey.

We need to call out a few of Stanford's faculty. Our group is becoming increasingly prominent in the California Thoracic Society. First a big congratulations to our very own Drs. Kristina Kudelko and Gaurav Singh who are the Conference Co-Chairs - amazing job, you two. We also have to celebrate Dr. Michelle Cao, the current CTS President. We look forward to attending the conference in person this year.

January 20, 2022

"Newsweek has created international rankings for specialized hospitals and this year added Pulmonology as a category. Stanford did well for this initial outing coming in at number 7!

For the full list of 125 ranked programs, here is the link https://www.newsweek.com/worlds-best-specialized-hospitals-2022/pulmonology"