Dr Edward Abraham

Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Abraham completed his undergraduate and medical studies at Stanford University, then completed training in internal medicine and critical care at UCLA. He was on the faculty in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCLA for 10 years before moving to the University of Colorado where he became Director of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine. Since 2006, he has been Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Abraham’s research program focuses on underlying cellular mechanisms contributing to organ system dysfunction in sepsis and acute lung injury. He has been the overall principal investigator and has directed the coordinating center for a number of studies investigating novel agents for sepsis or acute lung injury. His laboratory is presently investigating the intersection of coagulation and inflammation, as well as the role of novel late acting proinflammatory mediators in inducing neutrophil activation and organ failure in sepsis and acute lung injury.
 

Dr Derek Angus

Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Critical Care Medicine with secondary appointments in Medicine and Health Policy and Management, and Director of the CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness) Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned his medical degree and completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Subsequently, he completed his Fellowship in Critical Care Medicine, combined with a Masters in Public Health degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr Angus is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American College of Critical Care Medicine. He specializes in the epidemiologic, economic and health services research aspects of critical illness and ICU organization and delivery. He has studied the development and application of cost-effectiveness analysis in critical care, the capability and impact of alternative ICU organizational models, traditional and novel ICU risk prediction tools, and the incidence, cost and short- and long-term outcomes of critical illnesses such as sepsis and respiratory failure.

Dr Angus has attracted considerable research funding for these studies, authored or co-authored more than 350 publications, including more than 90 peer-reviewed articles, and lectured at scientific congresses nationally and internationally. Dr. Angus is currently leading three large NIH multicenter studies in the critically ill―GenIMS (Genetic and Inflammatory Markers of Sepsis), EA-PAC (Economic Analysis of the Pulmonary Artery Catheter), and ProNOx (Prolonged Outcomes in Neonatal Respiratory Failure after Nitric Oxide)

Dr Gordon Bernard

Past ISF Chair

Melinda Owen Bass Professor of Medicine, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Bernard formerly served as Director of the Division of Allergy/Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine from 2001-2007. Dr. Bernard’s research has focused primarily on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill patients with sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). He has been directly involved in NIH sponsored translational research in an academic setting for more than 25 years, supported by a wide variety of mechanisms (SCOR, R01, U01, S07, U54, Federal Contract, T-32, and industry contracts and grants). Dr. Bernard’s initial research program involved use of small and large animal models of disease to discern mechanisms and potential interventions of acute lung injury. In mid-career he transitioned to phase I and phase II translational research, exploring mechanisms and potential approaches to acute lung inflammation and lung failure. In the last 10 years Dr. Bernard has become increasingly involved in national and international multi-center clinical trials. His professional affiliations include the Association of American Physicians, the American Thoracic Society where he previously chaired the Assembly on Critical Care, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the Society for Critical Care Medicine. Gordon Bernard is also part of an NIH Roadmap initiative--a national collaboration of clinical trialists working to develop and introduce the next generation of study conduct and data gathering technology for large-scale multi-center trials, and also for exploratory phase I and II trials where interventions are complicated such as strict glucose control in a hospital environment. Dr. Bernard has also served on the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s Advisory Council.

Dr. Bernard’s commitment to clinical research led to his selection for the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s President’s Citation Award. He was also presented Vanderbilt’s Grant Liddle Award for faculty who demonstrate commitment and leadership in promoting an interest in research among young physicians. Dr. Bernard was selected as the “Annual Scholar for the MSCI/VPSD/VCRS programs” in 1994–an honor typically reserved for external recipients. These three programs encompass Vanderbilt’s key clinical research training programs and, depending on the program, accept post-residents in training, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty on a competitive basis. Most recently (April of 2007), Dr. Bernard was presented a “Darby Award,” an award for excellence in teaching and research from his fellow faculty at Vanderbilt. And, for the second time, has been presented with the Roger C. Bone medal from the American College of Chest Physicians for excellence in the field of sepsis research.

In his position as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Director for the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Dr. Bernard is charged with reorganizing the medical center’s approach to providing a clinical research infrastructure, creating a seamless clinical research process involving the IRB, grants, contracts, the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) and the Clinical Trials Center (CTC). This has culminated in Vanderbilt’s successful application for a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) in 2007 for which Dr. Bernard is P.I.
 

Dr Thierry Calandra

Professor of Medicine, Head, Infectious Diseases Service, Department of Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland. He received his MD from the University of Lausanne and his PhD from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He performed his internship and residency at the University Hospital in Lausanne and is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. His research training was accomplished at the Rockefeller University, New York, NY and at the Picower Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY.

Dr Calandra is a member of many medical societies, including the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases (President), the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is past President of the Fungal Infection Network of Switzerland, and Past-president of the International Immunocompromised Host Society and of the International Antimicrobial Therapy Group of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC).

Dr R. Phillip Dellinger

Past ISF Chair

Professor of Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry or New Jersey. He is Deputy Director for Education and Research for the Department of Medicine, Head, Division of Critical Care Medicine; Director, Medical/Surgical/Cardiovascular ICU; and Program Director of the Critical Care Medicine Fellowship training program at Cooper University Hospital, Camden, New Jersey. He is a fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine. He was previously the ACCP governor for both Texas and Missouri and gave the ACCP Roger C. Bone Honor lecture in 2001. Dr. Dellinger was president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) from 1998-1999. He is currently associate editor for the SCCM’s journal, Critical Care Medicine. He is the creator of the SCCM Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) course now taught in 5 languages. Dr. Dellinger has authored over 300 journal articles, films and book chapters in the fields of critical care medicine and pulmonary disease, featuring both laboratory and clinical research. He has edited over a dozen books and journal issues with emphasis on sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome. He co-edits the annual publication of the Yearbook of Critical Care Medicine and co-edited the second and recently published third edition of the major critical care textbook, Critical Care Medicine (Mosby). He has received numerous awards and honors, to include induction into the Baylor College of Medicine Teaching Hall of Fame and the SCCM’s Distinguished Service Award.

Dr. Dellinger was an associate chair of the 1992 consensus conference that created the first definitions for sepsis and chaired the 1997 National Institutes of Health/American College of Chest Physicians workshop, “The Future of Sepsis Research”. He is past chairman of the International Sepsis Forum. He serves on the executive committee of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC). He co-chaired the committee that created the 2004 SSC International Guidelines on the Management of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock and chaired the first revision in 2008. He previously served on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement ICU Collaborative Advisory Board and currently serves as faculty for both the New Jersey and Rhode Island Hospital Association ICU Performance Improvement Collaborative. He was the recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart while serving in Vietnam.
 

Dr Simon Finfer

Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sydney and at The George Institute for International Health in Sydney.  He is a founding member and past-chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trial Group.  His postgraduate qualifications include Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom, Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetics of the United Kingdom and Fellowship of the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists.

Professor Finfer's major academic interest is the design and conduct of large scale randomized controlled trials in critical care.  He was the lead investigator for the 6997 patient SAFE study (N Engl J Med 2004 May 27-350:247-56) and is the lead investigator and study Chair for the recently completed 6104 patient NICE-SUGAR study.

Dr Mitchell P Fink

Dr Stephen Lowry

In l997, Dr. Lowry was appointed to his current post, where he has succeeded in developing an outstanding department. His early research efforts served as a basis for the evolution of biologic response modification therapies for patients with severe infection and shock.  These studies have continued during his tenure at UMDNJ-RWJMS and have resulted in receipt of an NIH MERIT award that recognizes the continual performance of outstanding research.

Dr. Lowry is certified in General Surgery and has served or is serving on the Editorial Board of eight prestigious journals of surgery and nutrition and has contributed heavily to the literature as author or co-author of over 200 articles, over 100 abstracts, 120 book chapters as well as being Associate Editor of two books on Surgery and Surgical Research.  

He is the 2003 recipient of the Flance-Karl Award presented by the American Surgical Association to an American Surgeon whose work has contributed substantially to the advancement of clinical surgery and is cited by the Institute for Scientific Information – highly cited list in the field of Immunology.  In 2005, Dr. Lowry was inducted (honorary) into the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.    In 2006, Dr. Lowry received his M.B.A. from the Auburn University.

Dr John Marshall

Past ISF Chair

Professor of surgery at the University of Toronto and attending surgeon at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. He is also a practicing intensivist who serves as Director of Research Inter-departmental Division of Critical Care Medicine, University of Toronto. He received his MD from the University of Toronto and his fellowship in general surgery at Dalhousie University. Subsequent to this, he pursued a fellowship in critical care and surgical immunobiology at McGill University.

He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and textbook chapters. He is formerly editor in chief of the journal Sepsis and serves on the editorial boards of Critical Care, Current Opinion in Critical Care, and Shock. He is a member of a number of professional societies in surgery, critical care medicine, and the basic science of inflammation. He is councilor of the Shock Society, and a member of the executive board of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group.

Dr Marshall’s research interests include the basic and clinical biology of inflammation and the mechanisms of its resolution through programmed cell death, as well as the epidemiology and natural history of sepsis and the multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. He has been an active basic and clinical investigator in these areas and has lectured widely on inflammation and its role in the pathogenesis of the morbidity of critical illness.

Dr Jean-Paul Mira

Received his medical degree from Reims Medical School in 1990 and since then has developed his career in medicine and research both in France and in the USA where he spent 3 years at the Scripps Research Institute in California.

His research interests are genetic predisposition to sepsis, cellular responses to micro-organisms, membrane dynamics, Toll-like Receptor signaling, functional genomics and sepsis-induced immune-suppression. Jean-Paul is well published in the fields of immunology and critical care.

Dr Tom van der Poll

Received his MD degree from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam in 1986 and his PhD degree from the same University in 1991. In 1991 Tom van der Poll was board certified in the Netherlands in Internal Medicine, and in 2000 in Infectious Diseases.  From 1995 to 2000 he was a fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003 he was appointed Professor of Medicine in the University of Amsterdam.

From 1993 to 1995 Tom van der Poll worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Cornell University Medical College in New York. After his return to Amsterdam, Tom van der Poll started his own research group within the Academic Medical Center which focuses on innate immune responses to bacterial and mycobacterial infection. He is an internationally recognized expert in the immunology of sepsis and has served as a member of Data Safety and Clinical Monitoring Boards of several pivotal phase III sepsis trials evaluating immunomodulatory agents.

Dr Mervyn Singer

Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London, UK. His particular research focus is on (i) mechanisms of multi-organ failure, especially the roles of mitochondrial dysfunction and myocardial depression; (ii) mechanisms and management of septic shock; (iii) management of infection and infection control and (iv) monitoring of organ perfusion and perfusion adequacy. There is a strong translational emphasis to his studies that aim to travel from bench to bedside and back again. He has a healthily iconoclastic approach to current dogma; regardless of whether or not he will be proved right, it is nonetheless important to challenge the veracity of ingrained views and practices.

He has been heavily involved in multiple academic- and industry-instigated multi-centre trials, e.g. CORTICUS and PAC-Man. He sits on the Wellcome Trust Technology Transfer Panel and was appointed a UK NIHR (National Institute of Healthcare Research) Senior Investigator in 2009. His major sources of research funding comes from the UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, NIHR and European Commission. He has co-written/edited several textbooks including the Oxford Handbook of Critical Care and the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care.

Dr Jean-Louis Vincent

Past ISF Chair

Professor of Intensive Care at the University of Brussels and Head of the Department of Intensive Care at the Erasme University Hospital in Brussels.

Dr. Vincent has signed more than 650 original articles, more than 280 book chapters and review articles, and 730 original abstracts.  He has edited 86 books including 63 in his own series "Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine" and "Yearbook in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine" published by Springer-Verlag (Heidelberg, Berlin, New York).  He is co-editor of the Textbook of Critical Care (Elsevier Saunders, 5th Edition).  He has also written a French Manual of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Springer, France), and is the co-editor of the series "Le point sur..." (Springer, France)

Dr. Vincent is the editor-in-chief of "Critical Care", "Current Opinion in Critical Care", and "ICU Management".  He is member of the Editorial Boards of about 30 journals including "Critical Care Medicine" (senior editor), "PLoS Medicine", "Lancet Infectious Diseases", "Intensive Care Medicine", "Chest", "Shock", and "Journal of Critical Care".

Dr Vincent is a Past-President of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the European Shock Society, and the Past-Chairman of the International Sepsis Forum.  For 29 years he has organized an International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine which is held every March in Brussels.  this symposium, which gathers 5,000 participants, has become one of the largest meetings in the field.

He received the Foundation André Loicq award in 1986, the Foundation De Kerckheer award in 2000, the Distinguished Investigator award of the Society of Critical Care Medicine in 2001, the College Medialist Award of the American College of Chest Physicians in 2003, and he was the Recipient of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy "Therapeutic Frontiers Lecture" in 2007.