About PIDS

William J. Steinbach, MD, is Robert H. Fiser, Jr. MD Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, Chair of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Child Health at UAMS, and the Pediatrician-in-Chief at Arkansas Children’s. For the last 20 years, Dr. Steinbach has led an NIH-funded multi-disciplinary clinical care and research program supporting immunosuppressed children. His molecular, translational, and clinical research focuses on the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of invasive fungal infections and spans broader efforts with all infections in immunocompromised patients. His laboratory centers on the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus to understand the molecular mechanisms of cellular signal transduction in disease, develop novel fungal-specific molecular targets as therapeutics, devise new diagnostic assays, and conduct phase I-IV clinical trials in children. Dr. Steinbach founded and is the Director of the International Pediatric Fungal Network, a global consortium of 55 sites dedicated to investigating pediatric invasive fungal infections through multi-center cooperative studies that has led to the first pediatric-specific guidelines for these diseases. He has co-edited four textbooks, including Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillosis, Feigin & Cherry’s Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, the American Academy of Pediatrics Nelson’s Pediatric Antimicrobial Therapy, and most recently the first textbook in a new subfield: Pediatric Transplant and Oncology Infectious Diseases.

Buddy Creech, MD, MPH is Edie Carell Johnson Chair and Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and Director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Creech is Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit and PI for the CDC-funded Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Project. His work focuses on the evaluation of new vaccines and therapeutics targeting a number of pathogens, including S. aureus, influenza, RSV, and pertussis. Dr. Creech serves as Past-President of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and Chair of the PIDS Foundation.

Debra Palazzi, MD, MEd is Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas. She is the Medical Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Texas Children’s Hospital and participates in national antimicrobial stewardship educational and research activities. She has a strong interest in medical education and directed or co-directed pediatric infectious diseases fellowship education at BCM from 2007-2023. She is the Editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Pediatric Review and Education Program (PREP) for Infectious Diseases and was a planning committee member, then course co-director, of the PREP ID Review Course for a decade. She is an associate editor for JAMA Pediatrics and was an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society from 2016-2023. She has been a member of the PIDS Board of Directors since 2016, member of the PIDS Pediatric Committee on Antimicrobial Stewardship (2016-2022), member and Chair of the PIDS Education Committee (2017-2022) and served as the PIDS Liaison to the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Education Committee. She completed her term as PIDS Secretary-Treasurer in 2023 and continues to serve on the Executive Committee as PIDS President-Elect. Dr. Palazzi is committed to promoting the value of our specialty in all mission areas, recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and expanding research opportunities and support for PIDS members and trainees.

Tanvi Sharma, MD, MPH, serves as the Associate Chief and Clinical Director within the division of pediatric ID, as well as Director of the Pediatric ID Fellowship Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also co-director of the immunocompromised hosts infectious diseases (ID) service and co-director of ID in the Pediatric Transplant Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Her early research interests focused on metabolic complications in children with perinatally-acquired HIV infection receiving antiretroviral therapy and have since evolved to evaluating infectious outcomes in children undergoing solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as well as in other pediatric immunocompromised hosts. Dr. Sharma recently served as Chair of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) ID Community of Practice Pediatrics Working Group, which has been leading collaborative efforts with the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) to develop interactive educational modules and clinical conferences for pediatric transplant ID clinicians. She currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the PIDS Board of Directors, and is also a member of the PIDS Transplant ID Committee and served as the Chair for the St. Jude Subcommittee to lead the Transplant and Immunocompromised Hosts ID Symposium at the 2023 St. Jude/PIDS meeting.