I graduated from MIT and received a MD and PhD from the Univ. of California, San Francisco. During my PhD, I studied the molecular determinants of viral entry of HIV, Ebola, and Marburg viruses. I completed an internship and residency in Medicine and a fellowship in Cardiology as well as served as faculty in the Harvard Medical School system. I currently serve as the Director of the Center for Pulmonary Vascular Biology and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. I direct a basic and translational research laboratory in pulmonary vascular diseases coupled with a clinical practice in cardiopulmonary vascular medicine. I study pulmonary hypertension (PH), an example of an incurable disease where traditional methods of research have failed to provide adequate treatments to prevent or halt its progression. My laboratory is advancing the emerging discipline of "network medicine."​ We use computational and mathematical models of PH to perform millions of systematic permutations and thus identify critical molecular networks controlling disease progression. Thus, we can make predictions regarding the molecular origins of PH that have been missed by traditional scientific approaches. These computational predictions then guide our laboratory-based experimentation in mice and humans. My laboratory has already had success with this unorthodox approach, as we were one of the first groups to establish the crucial importance of microRNAs (e.g., small, non-coding ribonucleic acids) in PH progression. We plan to develop this strategy as a more efficient, powerful, and cost-effective way to identify new drugs, combinations of drugs, and perhaps unanticipated side-effects of drugs that accelerate or regress PH. We envision that our "network-based" discovery method could be applied to other complex human diseases, thus benefiting a greater number of patients worldwide.Specialties: General Cardiology, Pulmonary Vascular Medicine, Vascular Biology, Systems Biology