Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases
Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, CA USA

Sharon F. Chen, MD MS is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine, California USA. Dr. Chen is the Co-Director of Stanford Childrens’ Pediatric Infectious Diseases Program in Immunocompromised Hosts (PIDPIC). Dr. Chen’s research interest is in viral infections commonly affecting immunocompromised patients and the viruses' stimulation of the host's immune system. She has a special interest in latent and persistent viruses, such as cytomegalovirus, BK virus, adenovirus, hepatitis B virus and others. Dr. Chen focuses on the host immune response to these viruses with the end goal of improving clinical practices. She collaborates with individual and core viral/immunology laboratories to conduct my research, primarily on T-cell responses.

As Co-director of the Stanford Childrens' Pediatric Infectious Diseases Program in Immunocompromised Hosts (PIDPIC), Dr. Chen develops and conducts clinical and translational studies to improve identification, treatment and prevention of infectious diseases in the immunocompromised patient population. In collaboration with the clinical teams, she establishes best practices from their clinical studies and starts innovative protocols, in order to improve care for their complex patient population.

Dr. Chen’s scholarly work extends to medical education. She has a special interest in how people think and make decisions. These are vital skills to continually improve in order to provide high-quality care to patients. "Thinking" is a hidden process, so Dr. Chen builds tools to expose these hidden traits and takes advantage of large language models and AI to help detect and analyze these traits. Using design thinking principles and rooted in education pedagogy, Dr. Chen builds assessment tools to promote continual learning. She collaborates with education experts in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school).

Professor of Pediatrics
The Ohio State University;
Medical Director, Infectious Diseases Host Defense Program
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Columbus, Ohio, United States

Monica I. Ardura, DO, MSCS, FAAP, FPIDS, FIDSA is Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and pediatric infectious diseases (ID) consultant at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States. As the Medical Director of the Host Defense Program at NCH her clinical and research interests focus on the epidemiology, prevention, and management of infections in immunocompromised children; she serves as the site investigator in multi-institutional studies evaluating ID diagnostic and best practice prevention strategies in this population. As the Program Director for the ID Host Defense Fellowship and the Associate Program Director for the general Pediatric ID Fellowship, she is a clinical educator committed to the education and training of fellows in the subspecialty of pediatric transplant and immunocompromised ID. Dr. Ardura is an active member of pediatric immunocompromised host societies including the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), serving as past Chair of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Education Subcommittee and current Board Member, former Chair of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) ID Community of Practice Pediatrics Working Group, former Chair of the Infectious Diseases Committee of the International Pediatric Transplantation Association (IPTA), European Society of Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases.