Research

Charles Hogue, MD, received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He then completed post-graduate training as a resident in anesthesiology and cardiac anesthesia fellow at Harvard Medical School and The Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Hogue’s primary clinical focus is on cardiovascular and thoracic anesthesiology.  His research has focused on investigating methods to reduce the risk of organ injury from cardiac surgery particularly neurological and renal complications. Dr. Hogue has published more than 160 peer reviewed articles and book chapters and has been the co-author of 3 books.

Apkar Apkarian, PhD, is the director of the Center for Translational Pain Research and the Center of Excellence for Research in Chronic Pain and Drug Abuse. In addition to his position in Anesthesia, he is a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Apkarian is a neuroscientist and has been studying brain mechanisms of acute and chronic pain in humans and in animal models. His research has been continuously funded for the last 30 years, from more than 6 NIH institutes. He has mentored a large number of graduate and postgraduate students, many of whom now hold academic positions.

The latest research in his lab is examining biomarkers for predicting the development of chronic pain in osteoarthritis, mechanisms of placebo analgesia, limbic brain chemogenetic and optogenetic control of pain behavior in rodents, development of drug therapies for chronic pain and for transition to chronic pain, and the impact of opioid use on brain function in chronic back pain patients.

Louanne Marie Carabini, FD, MA, MFASA, studies systems-based improvement processes in critical care medicine, including outcomes studies after high-risk spine surgery, survival after in-hospital cardiac arrest and the impact of clinical protocols on blood product utilization rates.

With a background in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Carabini is also involved in qualitative research on moral distress in healthcare providers and the use of routine ethics consultation for ECMO care teams.

Richa Dhawan, MD, MPH specializes in Cardiac Anesthesiology. She is serving as the Associate Chair for Research for the Department of Anesthesiology. She completed medical school at Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin and a Masters of Public Health at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research is currently focused on thoracic surgery, specifically Intrathecal Morphine for Postoperative Analgesia in Video-Assisted and Robotic-Assisted Thoracic Surgery.

Mozziyar Etemadi, MD, PhD, leads the NM Healthcare Integrated Technologies (HIT) team, which, through deep, interdisciplinary partnerships with the health system, focuses on three key areas of research and development. 

First, the team builds clinically actionable artificial intelligence tools, several of which have already been deployed throughout the health system. Second, the team spends a significant effort on system integration middleware, combining data streams from disparate clinical information systems to form unified datasets for AI, frontline provider workflow enhancement and back-office operations.

Finally, through significant public funding from the NIH, DARPA and others, the HIT team uses its rapidly customizable hardware platform to build novel hardware devices ranging from wearable physiologic monitors to augmented ultrasound machines.

Jennifer Banayan, MD specializes in Obstetric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. She completed medical school at Rush Medical College. After graduating she went to West Suburban Hospital to complete an internship in Internal Medicine, followed by an Anesthesiology residency at University of Chicago, where she also did a fellowship in Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology. Her research focuses on obstetric anesthesiology and three of her studies were published in 2025 in the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesiology. 

Antoun Koht, MD, primarily focuses on neurophysiologic monitoring during cerebral aneurysm surgery and neurophysiologic monitoring in head and spine surgeries in general. He also studies anesthesia outcomes in awake craniotomies.

Thomas Schnitzer, MD, PhD, has active research program in bone biology and chronic musculoskeletal pain. In the bone field, research over the past decade has focused on understanding, preventing and reversing changes in bone mass and bone integrity after spinal cord injury. With support from NIH and in collaboration with Apkar Apkarian, PhD, research in chronic pain is directed toward understanding brain mechanisms involved in transition and maintenance of the chronic pain state.

Schnitzer is a leader in clinical trial methodology and has led clinical trials of numerous novel therapeutic agents to manage osteoarthritis and chronic back pain, funded by both federal and pharmaceutical sources.