John G. Augoustides, MD
Dr. Augoustides is interested in perioperative echocardiography, education, and thoracic aortic diseases.
Jacob Gutsche, MD
Dr. Gutsche focuses on selection criteria for patients with severe ARDS requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and prevention of complications for patients on ECMO.
W. Andrew Kofke, MD, MBA, FCCM
Dr. Kofke studies opioid neurotoxicity in preclinical and clinical contexts, cognitive and MRI sequelae of chronic opioid use, cerebral blood flow assessment in NeuroICU patients, and neuroprotection.
Joshua M. Levine, MD
Dr. Levine's research is on goal-directed cerebral resuscitation, secondary neurological injury, and multimodal neurological monitoring.
Danielle Sandsmark, MD, PhD
Dr. Sandsmark's, research focuses on neurocritical care and traumatic brain injury.
Joseph S. Savino, MD
Dr. Savino is interested in intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography, cardiac anesthesia and intensive care, and cardiopulmonary bypass.
Audrey E. Spelde, MD
Dr. Spelde studies optimizing management of mechanical circulatory support. Among patients with acute and chronic lung disease, she investigates the relationship between right heart and pulmonary disease, appropriate utilization of right heart mechanical support, and the effect of mechanical support on microcirculatory function.
Emily A. Vail, MD, MSc
Dr. Vail explores ways that healthcare is delivered to critically ill adults, including the use and comparative effectiveness of vasopressor medications, the impact of external factors (e.g., drug shortages, new scientific evidence) on changes in clinical practice, and the management of organ donors.
William Vernick, MD
Dr. Vernick studies extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), cardiothoracic anesthesia, and perioperative echocardiography.
The Center focuses the relationship between perioperative care, decision making and communication, and meaningful patient-centered outcomes.
CPORT serves as a nucleus of expertise and effort related to perioperative health services research, to provide educational and mentoring opportunities for interested trainees and early-career faculty, and to facilitate collaboration across multiple disciplines to improve perioperative outcomes through high-quality comparative effectiveness research and implementation science.
Joseph Cichon, MD, PhD is dedicated to understanding how powerful, rapid acting anesthetics, such as ketamine, alter neuronal circuits in healthy individuals and neuropsychiatric diseases. His basic science approach spans neuroscience, psychiatry, and anesthesia with the hope that some of these mechanistic insights will motivate improved strategies for anesthesia and treatment of challenging neuropsychiatric diseases.
Check out the exciting research in the Cichon lab.
Max B Kelz, MD, PhD
Uses advanced ex vivo and in vivo approaches to study cellular and network interactions that underlie both the anesthetic state, and the transitions between states of anesthesia and wakefulness.
Learn about research being done at the Kelz Lab.
Andrew McKinstry-Wu, MD
Seeks to understand the contributions of central adrenergic circuits to hypnosis, arousal, and transitions between the two states.
Check out the McKinstry-Wu lab.
Alex Proekt, MD, PhD
Uses electrophysiology and advanced statistical approaches to understand how the brain “reboots” during emergence from anesthesia.
The Corder Lab @ Penn investigates how the brain generates the perception of pain and aversive memories, and how dysfunction in these networks drives the transition to chronic pain and drug abuse. We combine the pharmacology of opioids and psychedelics with state-of-the-art neuroscience approaches—including in vivo imaging of neural activity, neuroanatomical circuit tracing, and optical neuromanipulation—to dissect the brain circuits and molecular mechanisms that shape pain, pleasure, and motivation.
is dedicated to understanding how powerful, rapid acting anesthetics, such as ketamine, alter neuronal circuits in healthy individuals and neuropsychiatric diseases. His basic science approach spans neuroscience, psychiatry, and anesthesia with the hope that some of these mechanistic insights will motivate improved strategies for anesthesia and treatment of challenging neuropsychiatric diseases.
Check out Joe's exciting research.
Roderic G Eckenhoff, MD uses innovative chemical biological tools to reveal new anesthetic targets, and mechanisms of their modulation and contribution to the complex state of anesthesia.
View ongoing research in the Eckenhoff Lab.
Thomas T. Joseph, MD, PhD uses computational biophysics and molecular dynamics simulation to study anesthetic mechanisms.
Max B Kelz, MD, PhD uses advanced ex vivo and in vivo approaches to study cellular and network interactions that underlie both the anesthetic state, and the transitions between states of anesthesia and wakefulness.
Learn about research being done at the Kelz Lab.
Renyu Liu, MD, PhD is interested primarily in the molecular pharmacology of opioids, specifically kappa agonists, and their potential use for neuroprotection.
Andrew McKinstry-Wu, MD uses sophisticated optical and chemical approaches to reveal the mechanisms by which alpha-2 agonists produce sedation.
Check out the research in the McKinstry-Wu lab.
Alex Proekt, MD, PhD uses electrophysiology and advanced statistical approaches to understand how the brain “reboots” during emergence from anesthesia.
E. Railey White, MD, PhD uses chemical biological tools to understand the mechanisms of anesthetic action with a focus on the non-anesthetic effects of anesthetics.
Deborah J. Culley, MD, has a longstanding interest in perioperative neurocognitive disorders (PND). This interest includes studies on the effects of anesthesia and surgery on the aged brain with a particular emphasis on postoperative delirium and persistent postoperative cognitive dysfunction and the development of screening tools that can identifying patients at greatest risk allowing precious health care resources to be aimed at patients at greatest risk.
Maryellen F Eckenhoff, PhD, is interested in the behavioral and pathologic consequences of exposure to anesthesia and surgery, especially in the context of a brain made vulnerable by the extremes of age, or other neuropathology.
Roderic G Eckenhoff, MD, is interested in the molecular underpinnings of anesthetic neurotoxicity, and serves as the chief scientific officer of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Brain Health Initiative.
Huafeng Wei, MD, PhD, focuses on calcium dysregulation as a mechanism of both anesthetic neurotoxicity as well as the neurodegeneration that underlies Alzheimer's disease.
John GT Augoustides, MD uses database analysis approaches to understand the determinants of poor outcome in cardiac surgical patients.
Jack Gutsche, MD research focuses on the selection criteria for patients with severe ARDS requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and the prevention of complications for patients on ECMO.
Audrey Spelde, MD research interests are in optimizing management of mechanical circulatory support. Among patients with acute and chronic lung disease, she aims to better understand, 1) the relationship between right heart and pulmonary disease, 2) appropriate utilization of right heart mechanical support, and 3) the effect of mechanical support on microcirculatory function.
Nabil Thalji, MD, PhD is studying perioperative homeostasis using biochemical and in vivo imaging techniques.
Asad Usman, MD, MPH research interests are in mechanical circulatory support and programmatic development in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and patient management. He is also interested in Rescue TEE, a new technology that gives live ultrasound images from inside a patient during CPR.
The Perioperative Informatics Research Group (PIRG) studies questions of anesthetic practice patterns and operating room efficiency through the use of perioperative and anesthetic record data.
Thomas T. Joseph, MD, PhD
Dr. Joseph's research on perioperative informatics uses anesthetic records and other perioperative data to inform the improvement of efficiency in the operating room. Tom also manages Penn's participation in the Multicenter Perioperative Outcomes Group, a multi-institutional collaboration.
Gurmukh Sahota, MD, PhD
Dr. Sahota's research interests are in computational biology, computational genomics, clinical informatics, and bioinformatics.
Michael A Ashburn, MD, conducts clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of new methods for the treatment of acute and chronic pain.
Dr. Cichon is dedicated to understanding how powerful, rapid acting anesthetics, such as ketamine, alter neuronal circuits in healthy individuals and neuropsychiatric diseases. His basic science approach spans neuroscience, psychiatry, and anesthesia with the hope that some of these mechanistic insights will motivate improved strategies for anesthesia and treatment of challenging neuropsychiatric diseases.
Dr. Corder and his Corder Lab investigates studies the neural basis of how the brain generates the perception of pain, and how pathological dysfunction within these brain networks promotes the transition to chronic pain and drug abuse.
John T Farrar, MD, PhD focuses on pain, pain metrics and pain imaging technology.
W. Andrew Kofke, MD uses sophisticated optical tools, in collaboration with the physics department, to study the consequences of anesthesia, surgery and trauma on brain blood flow and oxygen extraction in humans.
Renyu Liu, MD, PhD,is interested primarily in the molecular pharmacology of opioids, specifically kappa agonists, and their potential use for neuroprotection.
Rosemary C Polomano, PhD, RN, FAAN, focuses on psychometric testing of patient-reported outcomes for pain and related experiences and multimodal analgesic interventions.