Please join us in congratulating Susanna Scafidi, MD, for her promotion to the rank of full-time Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Scafidi is a translational researcher who is nationally and internationally recognized for her novel contributions to the understanding of changes in metabolism following injury of the developing brain. Her research has substantially contributed to the delineation of the role of alternative substrates as brain fuels to sustain oxidative metabolism following brain injury, including traumatic brain injury and neonatal hypoxia.

Dr. Scafidi received her medical degree from the Samarkand State Medical Institute, Uzbekistan, in 1995. Following her move to the USA, she completed a pediatric residency at the Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. She subsequently completed a fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore of the Yeshiva University – Albert Einstein College of Medicine. This was followed by an additional research year in the same institution. Dr. Scafidi then joined the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) Department of Pediatrics faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2005, where she attended in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and continued her research with a focus on energy and metabolism and developmental brain injury. In 2012, she was recruited by the Johns Hopkins Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine as a clinician scientist.

In addition to her research, Dr. Scafidi attends to critically ill children in the PICU of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and has played a key role in the leadership of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Neurocritical Care Program. Using her exceptional collaboration and teamwork skills, Dr. Scafidi has developed and co-led a highly successful and nationally recognized collaborative research team with faculty in the Departments of ACCM, Biological Chemistry, Orthopedic Surgery, Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery, Neurology, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. For the past 11 years, Dr. Scafidi has played an important role in building and facilitating innovative education for pediatric critical care fellows, nurse practitioners, bedside nurses, and the transport team. For her passion and ongoing commitment to the education mission, Dr. Scafidi served for several years as the Education Director of the Pediatric Neurocritical Program.

This promotion recognizes Dr. Scafidi’s full range of research, teaching, and clinical program-building activities that makes her an outstanding role model for those focused on biomedical research at the intersection of biochemistry, physiology, and medicine. Congratulations, Susanna!