Dr. Yenari's lab focuses on various strategies to limit the amount of brain injury that results from ischemia. The focus has centered around the role of inflammation, and how immune responses contribute to brain ischemia and injury.

Dr. Natalie Purcell is a sociologist who specializes in the study of violence, trauma, and pain across healthcare contexts. Her work uses mixed methods drawn from the social sciences and the humanities, as well as program-evaluation and implementation-science techniques. Since joining the VA in 2011, Dr. Purcell’s research has centered on understanding the impact of violence and combat trauma in the lives of US military veterans, identifying and evaluating care interventions to address violence-related trauma and pain among veterans, and identifying ways to reduce violence against healthcare workers. Dr. Purcell’s work at VA involves not only violence and trauma-related research, but also transformation of the institutional culture to promote organizational health and patient centered care.

Infective endocarditis is a life-threatening infection of the valves of the heart. The aim of Dr. Sullam's research is to define the basic mechanisms by which certain bacteria (streptococci and staphylococci) produce endocarditis and hopes this research will provide a basis for creating new therapies or vaccines to treat or prevent this serious, often fatal infectious disease.

Dr. Tien is a clinical translational researcher who investigates chronic viral infections, specifically HIV and HCV, and their metabolic and inflammatory consequences on long term organ injury (e.g. liver, bone and vascular injury). As part of this work, she also studies novel non-invasive techniques to estimate steatosis and fibrosis using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and ultrasound-based transient elastography as well as novel CT and MR imaging methods to measure bone and vascular injury.

Dr. Swanson has a longstanding interest in excitotoxic and oxidative neuronal death, and in particular, the role of bioenergetics in these processes. A major aim of his research program is to elucidate the bioenergetic events between activation of PARP and cell death under disease conditions in brain. These studies are germane to Parkinson’s disease, ischemia, and other conditions in which oxidative stress contributes to neuronal demise.