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Title/Department:

Professor, Internal Medicine Infectious Diseases, College of Medicine

Expertise:

Infectious diseases

Research Interest:

My primary research interest is in infections that occur in immunosuppressed cancer patients, particularly those with neutropenia. Accordingly, I have written a number of papers, chapters and chaired guidelines for medical practice in this area. Other specific projects have investigated fungal infections in immunosuppressed hosts, with a focus on histoplasmosis - a fungal infection endemic to the Midwest. More recently, my research involves a productive collaboration with chemical engineers from UNL with whom I am working to develop a rapid, low cost, point-of-care detection assays for tuberculosis. This involves the use of a novel rapid PCR technology to be adapted to clinics in resource-poor settings where the rapid (within an hour) diagnosis of tuberculosis will have a profound impact on treatment strategies and outcomes. Recently, we have turned our attention to technologic improvement in C.difficile toxin and DNA detection. The accurate diagnosis of this widespread nosocomial pathogen is currently very nonspecific, labor intensive and costly, so our aim is to again adapt novel diagnostic technologies to improve these parameters.

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