In this episode of At the Bench, Misty Good and David McCulley interview Dr. Sallie Permar, Chair of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine and Director of the Pediatric Scientist Development Program. Dr. Permar shares how her early global health experiences in Zambia inspired her career as a pediatric infectious disease physician-scientist and vaccine researcher. She discusses the challenges and advances in developing vaccines against HIV and congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV), the importance of newborn CMV screening, and a novel strategy to prevent breast milk–acquired CMV infection in premature infants. She also reflects on mentorship, advocacy, health policy, scientific communication, and the importance of translating clinical observations into discoveries that improve children’s health.

In this episode, Misty and Betsy sit down with Dr. Brian Kalish, a neonatologist-neuroscientist at Boston Children's Hospital, for a wide-ranging conversation on building a career at the intersection of fetal and neonatal brain injury research. Brian traces his path from public health and pediatric surgery to neuroscience, describes what "technical courage" means in the lab, and shares the story behind his move to SickKids Toronto and back. He discusses his lab's work on Down syndrome neurobiology, a newly funded multi-center trial targeting transposable element activation, and an ambitious hydrogen gas trial for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy using an Exception from Informed Consent framework. A conversation about mentorship, global health, and staying inspired through the hard parts of physician-scientist training.

What happens when a mom's immune system loses its tolerance for pregnancy, and a physician-scientist builds an entire lab, and career, around figuring out why? On this episode of At the Bench, hosts Ben Fensterheim and David McCulley sit down with Dr. Jackie Lajiness, a neonatologist and physician-scientist at Indiana University. Dr. Lajiness traces her path from an undergraduate laser spectroscopy lab to an MD-PhD, and shares her current research using a mouse model of regulatory T-cell (Treg) depletion to study immune-mediated preterm birth. She explores how maternal immune tolerance shapes the in utero environment and the developing neonatal immune system, with a focus on IL-9 and STAT3 signaling and the uniquely rule-breaking immunology of the placenta. The conversation also turns to mentorship and community, including the Pediatric Scientist Development Program, and closes with what keeps Dr. Lajiness grounded outside the lab: rock climbing with her family.