Mellon Scholars

The Mellon Scholars program is the foundation of the Richard King Mellon Institute for Pediatric Research at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

Scholars are comprised of all assistant professors in the tenure stream at UPMC Children’s Hospital, across all divisions.

Our goal is to:

• foster career development
• create a stronger community of investigators
• retain talented scientists and physician-scientists

Our Mellon Scholars and their Research Focus

• Sameer “Sam” Agnihotri, PhD – Personalized treatment for brain cancer
• Rannar Airik, PhD – New strategies to treat kidney failure
• Kelly M. Bailey, MD, PhD – The Ewing sarcoma microenvironment and immune responses to pediatric sarcomas
• Corina O. Bondi, PhD – Therapeutic strategies after experimental traumatic brain injury
• Thiago Bruder do Nascimento, MSc, PhD – Vascular biology and metabolic diseases 
• Brian Campfield, MD – Fending off foreign attacks on the lung
• Shaun Carlson, PhD – The identification of therapeutic approaches to promote recovery after brain injury.
• Joseph Thomas Church, MD – Prenatal therapies for congenital diaphragmatic hernia
• Alison Culyba, MD, PhD, MPH – Community-engaged violence prevention
• Will DePas, PhD – Biogeography of bacterial infections
• Catherine Forster, MD – Urobiome in UTIs
• Lina Ghaloul Gonzalez, MD – Plain people (Amish/Mennonites) translational medicine
• Radha Gopal, PhD – Cardiovascular diseases associated with viral infection
• Katherine Guyon-Harris, PhD – Interventions to support positive parent-child relationships across the perinatal period
• Tom Hooven, MD – Mechanisms and prevention of perinatal infections
• Baoli Hu, PhD – Brain tumor cell behavior
• Jessica Jarvis, PhD, MT-BC – Improving the efficacy and equity of pediatric rehabilitation services for children with chronic and serious illnesses
• Melissa Kane, PhD – Viruses and the immune system
• Dwi U. Kemaladewi, PhD – Interventional genomics in rare diseases
• Laura Kirkpatrick, MD – Reproductive Health and Epilepsy
• Gary Kohanbash, PhD – Brain tumor vaccines 
• Marcus Malek, MD – Precision-guided surgery to find cancers
• Christine March, MD, MS – Optimizing health care delivery and outcomes for youth with diabetes
• Anita McElroy, MD, PhD – Virus effects throughout the body 
• Amanda Poholek, PhD – Transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of immune cell function
• Maya Indira Ragavan, MD, MPH, MS – Supporting IPV survivors in pediatric healthcare settings
• Anne-Marie Rick, MD, MPH, PhD – Protection against newborn infections through maternal immunity
• Franziska Rosser, MD, MPH, FAAP – Epidemiological effects of outdoor air pollution on children with asthma
• Anita Pradeep Saraf, MD, PhD – Developing a better understanding the role of genetic mutations, chronic inflammation and mechanical strain on cardiomyocytes
• Laurie Silva, PhD – Viral and host determinants of virus replication and pathogenesis 
• Amery Treble-Barna, PhD – Neurologic function after brain injury
• Mary Ellen Vajravelu, MD, MSHP – Improving outcomes and achieving health equity for youth with type 2 diabetes
• Xiangwei Xiao, MD, PhD – Insulin cell function and preservation