Faculty
Mir Basir, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Basir is a 1982 graduate of the Nishtar Medical College in Pakistan. He spent 4 years (1988-91) as a pediatric resident at the Lincoln Medical Center in New York, followed by a neonatology fellowship at the University Hospital in Stony Brook (1001-92) and the Medical College of Georgia (1992-94). Since that time, Dr. Basir has practiced neonataology in Indiana and Wisconsin. He joined the MCW faculty in 2002.
Erwin T. Cabacungan, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Cabacungan earned his MD is 1987 from the University of Philippines college of Medicine in Manilla. The following year, he completed a postgraduate internship at the University of Philippines/Philippine General Hospital Medical Center. He went on to complete his pediatric residency at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin from 1990-93, where he served as Pediatric Chief Resident from 1992-93. Dr. Cabacungan completed a three-year neonatology fellowship at the University of Maryland Hospital in 1996. He joined the neonatology faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin as a Co-Director of Neonatology Services at Provena St. Therese Hospital and Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan Illinois. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Cabacungan's publications.
Gary A. Cohen, M.D., M.S. - Assistant Professor
Dr. Cohen graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1980. He continued his education with an internship and residency at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and the Medical College of Wisconsin, which he completed in 1983. Dr. Cohen started his own private practice in 1983 until the Children's Medical Group bought it in 1997. During this time, he pursued his education at the Medical College by receiving a Master of Science Degree from the Department of Physiology in 2002 and defended his thesis entitled, "Reproducilibility of the Head-Up Tilt Table Test in Adolescents with Neurocardiogenic Syncope." Awards he has received included "Outstanding Teaching" three times from the Department of Pediatrics for volunteer faculty and the "Marvin Wagner, M.D., Clinical Preceptor Award" in 1998, also from the Medical College of Wisconsin. In February 2003, Dr. Cohen joined the Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He works in the Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital Newborn Nursery.
Utpala "Shonu" Das, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Das earned her MD in 1991 from Indiana University School of Medicine, IN. She went on to do her internship and residency at James Whitcomb Riley Children's Hospital, Indiana University Medical Center, which she completed in 1994. Dr. Das started her neonatal fellowship at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis and completed it at Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. From there she proceeded to do a post-doctoral research fellowship at Magee-Womens Hospital. She joined the MCW Neonatology Division as an assistant professor in June of 1999. Her clinical interests are in the care of critically ill neonates, and her research interests are glucose transporter proteins and fetal alcohol syndrome and its dysmorphology. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Das' publications.
Ronald N. Hines, PhD - Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology/Toxicology
Co-Director, Birth Defects Research Center
Dr. Hines is Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He also is Co-Director of the Birth Defects Research Center, a joint venture of the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and the Medical College of Wisconsin. In 1980, he obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas and after completing postdoctoral training in molecular biology at the University of Vermont, started his academic career at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Eppley Institute for Cancer Research. In 1989, he moved to the Department of Pharmacology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 1995. At Wayne State University, Dr. Hines also held appointments in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Department of Pediatrics and as Deputy Director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center. He accepted his current position at the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1999. Dr. Hines is an active member of several professional societies, including the Society of Toxicology, the American Association of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and the American Association of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He also is an Associate Editor for Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, and sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Drug Metabolism and Disposition, and Chemico-Biological Interactions. Dr. Hines' research interests are focused on molecular mechanisms regulating the expression of several drug metabolizing enzymes, including tissue-specific control mechanisms, mechanisms responsible for the activation of expression during development, and mechanisms responsible for interindividual differences in expression (pharmacogenetics). Emphasizing members of the cytochrome P450 and flavin-containing monooxygenase gene families, the research program is particularly interested in how these regulatory mechanism may impact the etiology of and/or susceptibility to environmentally-linked birth defects.
Click here for a complete list of Dr. Hines' publications.
Robert M. Kliegman, MD - Professor and Chair - Department of Pediatrics, Medical College of Wisconsin
Pediatrician-in-Chief, Pamela and Leslie Muma Chair in Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
Dr. Kliegman completed his residency training in General Pediatrics at Babies Hospital in New York City. There he was influenced by Virginia Apgar, Bill Silverman and others. He completed his neonatology and metabolism fellowships at Case Western Reserve University and in Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital.
Dr. Kliegman's interests include neonatal glucose and insulin metabolism, neonatal nutrition, and prevention of infant mortality and low birth weight. A clinical interest in neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis has helped to define this illness as a significant perinatal health problem. More recently Dr. Kliegman has focused attention on the problems of low income and medically underserved children. He has been a child advocate at the local, state, and national level working with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the George Washington University Health Policy Institute-Packard Foundation Roundtable.
In addition, Dr. Kliegman has concentrated efforts to identify ways for the Department of Pediatrics to meet the needs and desires of private, community based Pediatricians and Family Practitioners. He is co-editor of the Nelson Pediatric Textbook, Nelson's Essentials of Pediatrics, and Practical Strategies in Pediatric Diagnosis and Therapy. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Kliegman's publications.
G. Ganesh Konduri, MD - Associate Professor, Section Chief, Fellowship Program Director
Dr. Konduri recently joined our division at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He completed his residency in Pediatrics and his fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, Little Rock, AK in 1987. He then joined the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI from 1987-May 2000. Dr. Konduri's research interest is in persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. His research includes both bench research in vascular biology and clinical studies in vasodilator therapy in PPHN. His laboratory research is funded by an RO1 from the NIH. He is currently using chronically instrumented fetal lambs to study hemodynamic changes in pulmonary circulation at birth. He is also studying the role of purine receptors in regulation of nitric oxide biology in isolated vessels and cultured vascular endothelial cells, and he is the PI for a multi-center trial of early-inhaled nitric oxide in term/near-term infants with respiratory failure. The trial has currently enrolled 210 infants from 24 sites in the USA and Canada and is funded by NICHD and the Medical Research Council of Canada. In addition to his research, Dr. Konduri is also interested in teaching research techniques to fellows and residents in Pediatrics. His teaching efforts have been recognized by the house staff and medical students with five teaching awards. Six fellows and residents from his laboratory have also won research awards at national meetings. He is a member of several professional organizations including Society for Pediatric Research. He is an ad hoc reviewer for Pediatric Research, American Journal of Physiology, and Biology of the Neonate. He chairs The Neonatal Inhaled Nitric Oxide Study Group, a collaborative group consisting of investigators from NICHD-Neonatal Network and Canadian Inhaled Nitric Oxide Study Group. His long-term goal is to develop a center dedicated to pulmonary hypertension research at the Medical College of Wisconsin and to provide training for neonatal fellows interested in basic and clinical research to improve the outcome of babies with respiratory failure. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Konduri's publications.
Steven Leuthner, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Leuthner graduated from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 1989. He then went on to complete a residency in Pediatrics at Children's Memorial Hospital of Northwestern University, and a fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Northwestern University. During his fellowship he undertook a masters degree in HealthCare Ethics at Loyola University in Chicago. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Bioethics at the Health Policy Institute. Clinically, he is a neonatologist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and Waukesha Memorial Hospital. His clinical and research interests have been focused in two areas. First, he has published and is continuing to explore the impact of palliative care consultation on infant end of life care. The second is ethical decision-making in neonatology at the extremes of prematurity, as well as with fetal anomalies. He is the clinical director of the Program for Fetal Concerns and is actively involved in prenatal consultation for families that have discovered a congenital anomaly in their fetus, and is interested in the impact these discoveries have on families. Finally, he is actively involved in educational activities including lecturing and being a small group preceptor for the Medical Ethics and Palliative Care course, co-coordinating the pediatric clerkship ethics education, as a guest lecturer for the MCW graduate program regarding pediatric ethics, and has sat on multiple thesis committees for the graduate students. He is the chairman of the CHW Ethics Committee and also sits on the Waukesha Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee. He is also chairman of the Ethics Committee for the Wisconsin chapter of the AAP. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Leuthner's publications.
D. Gail McCarver, MD, Associate Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology/Toxicology
Co-Director, Birth Defects Research Center
Dr. McCarver is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology and Toxicology. She serves as Co-Director of the Birth Defects Research Center, a new initiative by the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and the Medical College of Wisconsin. She received her M.D. from the University of Tennessee in 1978. Subsequently, she completed pediatric internship and residency at James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University. She practiced general pediatrics for three years and then returned to training, completing a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine at the University of Tennessee in 1986. Afterwards, she completed a three year post-doctoral research fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. In 1989, she joined the faculty at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, as an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics and Pharmacology. At Wayne State, she was an attending neonatologist at the Children's Hospital of Michigan and Hutzel Hospital and was an active member of the Environmental Health Sciences Center and the Fetal Alcohol Research Center. She was promoted to Associate Professor at Wayne State University in 1998. She was recruited to the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in 1999. Dr. McCarver is an active member of several professional societies, including the Society for Pediatric Research, the Research Society on Alcohol and the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. She has served as a member of American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs and has provided consultation and expert testimony to FDA on several subjects in pediatric therapeutics. Dr. McCarver's research interest is genetically-determined and environmentally-induced differences in xenobiotic metabolism as risk factors for birth defects. In pursuing this interest, she uses multiple approaches and tools, including epidemiologic methodology, clinical outcome assessment, molecular techniques and chemical analysis. Current work in her laboratory includes molecular studies that evaluate the mechanism of a genetic polymorphism in CYP2E1, a cytochrome P450 enzyme that metabolizes both ethanol and multiple organic solvents. Molecular tools are also utilized to determine the variation in the impact of pregnancy on human CYP2E1. In addition, her laboratory uses sensitive GCMS assays to quantify xenobiotic exposures of pregnant women in metropolitan Milwaukee. By integrating these data with the results of molecular studies, she is testing important interactions among multiple environmental exposures and maternal and offspring genotypes as determinants of adverse offspring outcome. Click here for a complete list of Dr. McCarver's publications.
Ruth Rademacher, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Rademacher earned her BS in biology and chemistry from Mundelein College in 1973 and went on to receive her MD from the University of Health Sciences at the Chicago Medical School in 1980. In 1983, she completed her pediatric residency training at MCW/CHW. Since 1983, Dr. Rademacher has been the head of the Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at the Medical-Surgical Clinic in Milwaukee, where she has also served as head of the Quality Assurance Committee, and since 1985, the Assistant Medical Director. In January 2001, Dr. Rademacher joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor.
Ponthenkandath Sasidharan, MD - Professor
Dr. Sasidharan (Sasi) earned his medical degree from Kerla University of India in 1969. He did his U.S. training as an intern at St. Charles Hospital/Toledo, OH and his pediatric residency at Medical College of Ohio at Toledo where he was recognized as Outstanding Graduating Resident. He did his fellowship at the Medical College of WI (Milwaukee County Medical Complex) and was board certified in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in 1977. He has been with the Medical College of Wisconsin since 1986 and became the Head of the Division of Neonatology and Fellowship Program Director of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in 1990. In 1994 he became Professor and Medical Director of the NICU at Children's Hospital of WI and Medical Director for Waukesha Memorial Hospital NICU in 1996. Over the years, he has obtained numerous teaching excellence awards in pediatrics and the Dr. Edwin L. Gresham Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to Neonatology. He has authored and co-authored several book chapters, abstracts, and manuscripts, and presented at numerous national and international conferences. His research interests are in control of breathing and pulmonary mechanics. Currently, he is pursuing the outcome data of NICU patients. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Sasidharan's publications.
Joyce E. Turley, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Turley received her MD in 1989 from Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois. From there she went on to do two one-year internships; one in internal medicine at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago; the second in pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She remained at MCW for her pediatric residency, completed in 1996, and her fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine completed in 1999. She joined the MCW Division of Neonatology in August 1999. As an MCW faculty member, she is Co-Director of Neonatology Services at Provena St. Therese Hospital and Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois. Click here for a complete list of Dr. Turley's publications.
Michael Uhing, MD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Uhing joined the Medical College of Wisconsin Division of Neonatology in May 2002. He attended medical school at the University of Iowa and completed his residency in Pediatrics (1986-89) and fellowship in Neonatology (1989-1992) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to joining MCW, Dr. Uhing was a faculty member at Rush Medical College in Chicago, IL where he was the recipient of several awards including the Pediatric Attending of the Year 1996-1997 and the John Sutherland Young Investigator Award at the Midwest Society of Pediatric Research in 1996. He is a member of the Society for Pediatric Research. His research interests include the role of splanchnic organ dysfunction in the progression of the systemic inflammatory response.
Carey Ehlert, MD - Assistant Professor
Carey Ehlert, MD received her medical degree in 1997 from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In 2000, she completed her residency training in Pediatrics with the Joint Residency Program at the University of Nebraska/Creighton University in Omaha, NE. In 2003, she completed fellowship training in Neonatology at The Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO and is board certified in both Pediatrics and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. She joined the Medical College of Wisconsin in January, 2004 as a Clinician-Educator in the Department of Neonatology and has a special interest in medical education.