Dr. Huram Mok joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine as an Instructor as of January 2024. His career goal is to improve outcomes in patients with lung infections by understanding the mechanisms that balance pathogen clearance and immunopathology. His experiences as a clinical fellow, which involved taking care of patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, played a heavy role in developing this interest. As part of his Division’s NIH T32 training program, he joined Dr. Jeffrey Haspel’s lab in 2021, which studies how the molecular clock and circadian rhythms impact chronic respiratory diseases.
During his training, Dr. Mok acquired experience in generating mouse models of viral infection and asthma, in vitro culture of human primary lung cells, in vivo sampling of human airway epithelial cells, both bulk and single cell RNA sequencing, and circadian genomics. Given his clinical experience, he developed an interest in how circadian clocks affect viral pneumonia. In particular, he is currently studying the mechanisms by which alveolar macrophage circadian rhythms influence viral pneumonia pathogenesis. As he transitions to faculty, he looks forward to advancing this project as well as taking care of ICU patients. His research areas are studying the mechanisms by which alveolar macrophage circadian rhythms influence viral pneumonia pathogenesis and his key interest is ICU inpatient care.