Assistant Professor
Surender Rajasekaran, Assistant Professor Fixed Term in the College of Human Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, studies the impact of infectious diseases in the pediatric ICU using metabolomics and gene expression. He is interested in Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), renal failure and Multi-organ Dysfunction Syndrome (MODS). Dr. Rajasekaran is a Pediatric Intensivist at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. Dr. Rajasekaran is interested in leveraging the human genome to provide and design lifesaving therapies. As a pediatric intensive care physician, he researches methods for improving care for critically ill children. While the vast majority of children cared for by the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital PICU team survive, the deaths that occur are often due to organ failure that results from the initial disease – cancer, trauma or infection. Dr. Rajasekaran seeks to understand how the initial precipitating factors lead to organ failure and to understand its interaction with his patients’ genetics. Dr. Rajasekaran’s hope is to lay the groundwork for a personalized approach to patient care. In the future, patients at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital will receive care that uses their genetic characteristics to design therapy that is unique to them leading to more effective and potentially novel therapies.
Education & Training
- MBBS, Ogun State University, Sagamu, Nigeria, 1990
- MPH, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 1995
- Residency and Chief Residency, Metropolitan Hospital, Manhattan, New York, 1999
- Fellowship, University of Florida, Gainesville, 2001
Selected Grants
- Foundation Grant, Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital
- SHORA Grant, Spectrum Health Office of Research (SHORA)
- I Herrman Anesthesia Foundation Grant
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 2017, 18(3_suppl 1):S67-S82
- Frontier in Pediatrics, 2016, 4:77 Pediatric Cardiology, 2016, 37(2):225-31
- Journal of Intensive Care, 2016, 7;4:2 Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 2014, 15(5):401-8
- Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 2014, 15(6):e261-9
Clinical Activities
- Pediatric Intensivist, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital
- Medical Director of Research, Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital