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

• Rannar Airik, PhD – New strategies to treat kidney failure
• Kelly M. Bailey, MD, PhD – The Ewing sarcoma microenvironment and immune responses to pediatric sarcomas
• Erica Braverman, MD – Creating better chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for pediatric sarcomas
• Brian Campfield, MD – Fending off foreign attacks on the lung
• Shaun Carlson, PhD – The identification of therapeutic approaches to promote recovery after brain injury
• Jessica Daley, MD – Identifying and reversing mechanisms driving immunosuppression in Ewing Sarcoma
• Will DePas, PhD – Biogeography of bacterial infections
• Taylor Eddens, MD, PhD – Examining early life immune responses to viral infections and the connection to asthma development
• Catherine Forster, MD – Urobiome in UTIs
• Megan Culler Freeman, MD, PhD – Understanding how viruses cause paralysis
• 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
• 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
• Lisa Mauer, MD – The role of GRK2 in inhibition of the MALT1 proto-oncoprotein in lymphomagenesis
• Carolina Pinzon, MD – Molecular mechanisms of foregut congenital anomalies (EA/TEF and CDH)
• Maya Indira Ragavan, MD, MPH, MS – Supporting IPV survivors in pediatric healthcare settings
• Jacquelin Rankine, MD, PhD – Optimizing school health services to improve health and educational outcomes
• 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
• Jenny Ruiz, MD, MSCE – Language discordant communication research in pediatric oncology/li>
• 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 
• Mary Ellen Vajravelu, MD, MSHP – Improving outcomes and achieving health equity for youth with type 2 diabetes
• Yijen Wu, PhD –MuSIC 4 MIND - Multi-Systems Imaging Characterization for Mitochondrial Involvement in Neurological Disease
• Xiangwei Xiao, MD, PhD – Insulin cell function and preservation