Robert P. Dickson MD

Robert Dickson is a physician-scientist in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan, where he studies the role of the microbiome in lung disease and critical illness. He complements his clinical and research background in the pathophysiology of pulmonary and critical care medicine with expertise in the culture-independent techniques of microbial ecology. He has successfully used this approach to improve our understanding of the microbiome in sepsis and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), bacterial pneumonia, lung transplantation, pulmonary fibrosis, and the respiratory tract of healthy individuals. His laboratory specializes in integrative translational research, spanning from molecular characterization of respiratory microbiota to animal modeling of sepsis and lung injury to prospective trials of human subjects. His expertise in the study of the microbiome is reflected by recent first- and senior-author publications in Science Translational Medicine, Nature Microbiology, The Lancet, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He is a Senior Editor at Microbiome, a Specialist Editor of European Respiratory Journal, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine.