The Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine is pleased to announce that M. Cristina Vazquez Guillamet, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, has been awarded a National Institutes of Health R01 grant for her project, “Graph Neural Networks and Longitudinal Mediation Analysis for Hospital-Onset Sepsis to Improve Early Detection and Uncover Modifiable Risk Factors.” The R01 is the NIH’s flagship award supporting independent, investigator-initiated research.
Hospital-onset sepsis, which develops during a patient’s hospital stay rather than being present on admission, carries substantial mortality and often goes unrecognized until late in its course. This project uses graph neural networks, a form of machine learning suited to complex and interconnected clinical data, to detect sepsis earlier and more accurately than conventional tools allow. Longitudinal mediation analysis will then help identify which risk factors along a patient’s clinical trajectory are modifiable, pointing toward interventions that could prevent sepsis or reduce its severity before it becomes life-threatening.
The work reflects the central aim of Dr. Vazquez Guillamet’s research program: translating sophisticated computational methods into practical tools that identify at-risk patients and support better bedside decision-making. Dr. Vazquez Guillamet has a secondary appointment in the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine. We congratulate her on this significant award and look forward to the impact this research will have on patients with hospital-onset sepsis.