Meet Our Researchers

Learn more about what we're investigating by reading about what the following researchers are studying.

Colleen Badke, MD

Dr. Colleen Badke is a pediatric critical care physician who is interested in predicting clinical deterioration using a data science approach. She is developing and validating clinical prediction models for critically ill children that incorporate high frequency physiological data, in addition to other clinical variables. Her research program includes identifying optimal implementation strategies for these models at the bedside, to optimize real-time clinical decision-making. 

Matthew Barhight, MD

Dr. Barhight is the Director of Clinical Operations and a Critical Care physician in the PICU. His research focus is on acute kidney injury, fluid management, resuscitation fluid choice, and fluid overload in critically ill children. His current work is on the individualized approach to fluid management.

Rajit K. Basu, MD, MS, FCCM

Dr. Basu is internationally recognized for his research and is considered a world expert in the study of critical care nephrology. His work investigates the syndrome of acute kidney injury (AKI) in the ICU environment and encompasses tools for risk stratification, biomarker-based phenotyping of acute kidney injury, advanced extracorporeal renal support therapies, and novel strategies for fluid management. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed original science papers, review articles and book chapters. His research portfolio spans across basic, translational, clinical, education, and simulation science with support from local programs, federal grants, and industry. He serves on the editorial board of several critical care and nephrology journals and on several international consensus panels for critical care nephrology. He serves on the executive board of the Pediatric AKI NEXUS (otherwise known as the Prospective Pediatric AKI Registry). Current active work are to operationalize directives related to the pADQI consortium for 1) Expanded understanding of global and resource developing areas for AKI epidemiology, 2) Integration of advanced diagnostics into bedside care, 3) Trial development for fluid management, 4) Team and QI approaches to renal replacement therapy, 5) Initiatives for education and equity across AKI in the birth to adulthood spectrum.

Amanda C. Becker, MD

Bria M. Coates, MD

Dr. Coates is a physician-scientist who specializes in the intersection between pediatric critical care medicine and inflammatory responses to illness. Her research explores the inflammatory response to viral respiratory infections in children with the goal of understanding why young children are so susceptible to lung injury during viral infections. Her lab is currently investigating the role of innate immune cells in influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections. These results may contribute to the broader understanding of innate immunity and its role in critical illness.

Conrad Epting, MD, FAAP

Dr. Conrad Epting has a diverse research background, starting with neuronal cell differentiation as an undergraduate, pulmonary hypertension on the basis of pulmonary vascular disease in residency, skeletal muscle repair and regeneration during fellowship, and as a faculty member initially myocardial by pathogens, followed by a pivot to pediatric heart failure and the role for epigenetic regulation in resident stem cells. Although now primarily focused on education rather than research, he remains the curator of the Cardiac Biorepository, a research biobank to stimulate collaborative science and the Fontan Futures® Initiative working to preserve heart tissue and stem cells from patients with critical congenital heart disease for future use in cell-based therapies. In addition, he is working to build a pediatric cardiomyopathy registry coupling genetics with iPSC in collaboration with the Burridge laboratory at Northwestern Medicine.

Denise M. Goodman, MD, MS

Dr. Goodman is a pediatric critical care physician with research interests in critical care outcomes, care of patients with medical complexity, and the efficient and effective delivery of clinical care. Aligned with her clinical interest she has published on the care of children with chronic home mechanical ventilation and children with medical complexity. A second research interest is efficient and effective care, and one example of this is her work in readmissions reduction. She is Medical Director of Case Management and Care Coordination at the intersection of clinical medicine and the revenue cycle. Finally, she completed the Morris Fishbein Fellowship in medical editing at JAMA and has particular interest in the study of the dissemination of science.

Leslie A. Mataya, MD

Dr. Mataya is a pediatric critical care physician whose academic focus is at the intersection of critical care and transplantation medicine. Her work involves quality improvement initiatives to reduce harm and cost of care in transplant patients. She also studies children with acute on chronic liver failure and how their prioritization on the organ waitlist may impact their outcomes. Her prior work has centered around the doctor-patient relationship, brain death ethics, and organ donation/transplantation ethics.

Kelly N. Michelson, MD, MPH

Dr. Michelson is an attending physician in the Division of Critical Care at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Chief Ethics Officer for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. Her research complements her passion for bioethics, medical humanities and pediatric intensive care through a focus on communication, decision making pediatric palliative care, bereavement support, and bioethics. Recent projects of hers include efforts to improve communication and decision making among patients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers in the pediatric intensive care unit and efforts to help all people impacted by pediatric death regardless of when, where or how the child died.

Erin D. Paquette, MD, JD, MBe

Dr. Paquette is an Associate Professor in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law (by courtesy). She is also an attending physician in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Her primary academic interests include research, advocacy, and policy development that reduces health disparities, addresses bias, racism, and other structural determinants of health and promotes social justice. Her current research involves evaluating disparities in research enrollment and participation, the use of medical legal partnerships to address the social determinants of health, understanding provider and public perceptions of brain death, and addressing social and structural determinants of health that contribute to critical illness. 

Andrew Prigge, MD

Dr. Prigge is a Pediatric Critical Care physician-scientist whose research is focused on determinants of recovery from severe viral pneumonia in children. His research program integrates highly dimensional data from human samples with mechanistically driven laboratory experiments to understand how the pediatric immune system mediates resolution of inflammation and repair of lung tissue. His work seeks to inform the design of new therapeutics to hasten the recovery of critically ill children with viral respiratory infections.

L. Nelson Sanchez-Pinto, MD, MBI

Dr. L. Nelson Sanchez-Pinto is a pediatric critical care physician, data scientist, and clinical informatics specialist. His NIH-funded research focuses on applying data science and artificial intelligence to improve the care of children with sepsis and other critical care conditions. He leads several large-scale data sharing initiatives and data collaboration projects both nationally and internationally, including co-leading the team that derived and validated the Phoenix criteria for pediatric sepsis. He is the primary research mentor for several successful trainees, doctoral students, and junior faculty. Finally, he is active in a number of international research and professional organizations, including the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators Network where he has held several leadership and committee membership positions. In the Division of Critical Care at Lurie Children's, he serves as the Director of Academic Development, charged with helping the Division continue to grow its academic and scholarly pursuits both locally and nationally.

Craig M. Smith, MD

Dr. Smith is a pediatric intensivist and neurointensivist interested in support strategies after acute brain injuries. The goal of this research is to improve and focus present treatments in order to maximize survival and functional neurologic outcome after acute brain injuries such as anoxic brain injury after cardiac arrest. Present studies include a retrospective evaluation of the effect of so-called “neuroprotection” (osmotic therapies, blood pressure management) after pediatric cardiac arrest. He serves as site PI for several NIH-funded multi-center clinical trials for patients experiencing acute brain injuries.  He is also interested in the clinical care of sepsis/septic shock and multiple organ failure, and the utilization of therapeutics to support metabolism and energy deficit in these disease states.

Lauren R. Sorce, PhD, APRN-NP, CPNP, AC/PC, FCCM

Lauren R. Sorce is a Nurse Scientist and Senior Scientist in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. She is the Associate Director of Nursing Research for the Department of Nursing and faculty at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her areas of research include the microbiome, improvement of clinical outcomes for critically ill children and nurses. Lauren has led a multicentered trial, has been a co-investigator for numerous studies and site primary investigator for NIH-funded national studies. She also actively mentors’ nurses and physicians in research.

Eric L. Wald, MD, MSCI

Dr. Wald is a Pediatric Critical Care physician who also attends in the Cardiac ICU. His early research interests included cortisol biology and adrenal dysfunction surrounding stress states. Currently, he is investigating metabolic resuscitation and support during the treatment of critical illness during sepsis and surrounding cardiopulmonary bypass.