From May 12 to 15, the Department of Pediatrics hosted Pediatric Research Week. This annual event provides a venue for department researchers to present their latest work to an enthusiastic audience, offers engaging panel discussions about current topics and advances in pediatric medicine, and confers several prestigious department awards to this year’s winners. Participants attended livestreamed lectures, in-person events, and interactive sessions. Twelve events over four days attracted more than 1,000 total attendees, including a large in-person crowd at the Poster Session and Reception held in the Atrium of the Health Sciences Learning Center on Thursday afternoon.
Early Monday, May 12, Research Week opened with an offering from new department chair, John Williams, MD, professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases. His talk, “An Unexpected Journey,” traced his beginnings — plucked from an incipient career in land surveying — and led the audience through the many fortuitous decisions, events, and mentor connections that shepherded him to his present state: deep in research that focuses on the epidemiology, immunology, and pathogenesis of respiratory viruses, the leading causes of death in children worldwide. And chair of this Department of Pediatrics.
The day and week continued with topics that ranged widely, from considering ways to incorporate AI into scholarly work, to strategies for building teams, to dealing with uncertainty. Wednesday’s schedule featured “Fellow Capstone Presentations” from nine DOP graduating fellows. Cris Ebby, MD, a PGY-5 trainee in the Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship, won the Pediatrics Research Week Fellow Capstone Research Presentation Award for “Improving Healthcare Communication: Large Language Models for Summarizing and Translating Medical Notes.” The week progressed with the “Ellen Wald Faculty Research Forum” offering four talks on engaging topics and new research from faculty members and “Platform Presentations” featuring talks from six department members chosen from the submitted abstracts for the poster session.
In addition, four short presentations by department experts on research resources described the assistance and guidance available to researchers from the Pediatric Clinical Research Coordination (PCRC) program, the Biostatistics Support Core for the department, and the Research Resources in the DOP, which offers research administration “from proposal prep to award closeout.”
Research Week is the venue for the Odell Lecture and the Odell Awardee lecturer, and the Ellen R. Wald Research Awards and the two awardee presentations.
On Thursday, Jill Denson, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and director of the UW Prevention Research Center, presented the 2025 Odell Lecture. The lectureship was established in 1994 to honor Dr. Gerard B. Odell, emeritus professor of pediatrics and an internationally recognized researcher in the field of neonatal jaundice and bilirubin metabolism. Denson’s lecture was entitled “Partnership with Communities and Families to Address Health.”
The winner of the 2025 Odell Research Award was Doug Dean III, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Neonatology and Newborn Nursery. His lecture was entitled “Physics & Scanners & Brains, Oh My! My Journey in Imaging Early Brain Development.”
The Ellen R. Wald Research Award winners were Sarah Webber, MD, associate professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine and Complex Care and director of well-being in the Department of Pediatrics, and Sima Ramratnam, MD, MPH, associate professor in the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology. Webber spoke on “Finding Joy Through Process,” and Ramratnam’s presentation was entitled “Uncovering the Hidden Drivers of Childhood Asthma and Rhinitis.” All three presentations are available on YouTube on the 2025 Research Week webpage.
Dean also served as the co-chair of the Research Week planning committee with Michelle Kelly, MD, PhD, professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine and Complex Care. Kelly described the week as a success: “Co-directing Research Week with Doug was a great chance to showcase our department’s breadth — from basic science to clinical trials, health services research, and program development — while exploring new themes like AI and interdisciplinary research. Reva [Finkelman] and Kate [Dougherty] were, as always, essential: creative, thoughtful, and flawlessly organized.”
All presentations are available to view online via YouTube through the 2025 Research Week webpage. Simply click on the talks of each day’s listings and scroll to the YouTube offering.
The Research Week Guide is an 18-page comprehensive PDF overview of all scheduled events, including topics and authors of all 65 poster presentations.
Jill Denson, PhD, presented the Odell Lecture, "Partnership with Families and Communities to Address Health."
