Message from the Chief

Faculty of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine provide a range of clinical services in Central New Jersey. Our clinical services include an Academic Inpatient pulmonary consultation service, Medical Critical Care, and an Interventional Pulmonary Program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick, an Accredited Sleep Medicine Program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Somerset and a subspecialty clinic at the World Trade Center Clinical Center of Excellence in Piscataway, New Jersey.  At the Clinical Academic Building in New Brunswick, as part of Rutgers Health we offer a Comprehensive Sleep Disorders Clinic, an Accredited Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program and a General Pulmonary Outpatient clinic in addition to sub-specialty clinics in non-CF bronchiectasis and asthma. 

Division faculty members are active participants in educational mission of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, teaching at all levels of medical education. Faculty participate in medical student core courses as well as clerkships and electives in Pulmonary, Critical Care and sleep medicine. Internal Medicine, Neurology and Family Medicine residents can take electives in the division and also participate in the fellowship program educational conferences. The Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program features both clinical and research training components with special emphasis on pulmonary physiology and pathophysiology and critical care ultrasonography.   Highlights include a Rutgers Study Abroad grant for Global health, rotations in the Cardiothoracic and Neurocritical ICUs and the Pulmonary Hypertension Program in Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick as well as in the Lung transplantation program at Newark Beth Israel Hospital. 

The division’s research activities include basic, clinical and translational as well as epidemiological research and clinical trials. The recent COVID 19 pandemic with New Jersey seeing the second largest number of cases in the United States has provided an opportunity for research in COVID 19 patients examining mechanism of disease, investigation of outcome of patients, and performance of epidemiological studies and randomized clinical trials of various therapies.  A large cohort of World Trade Center Responders being followed clinically affords opportunity for ongoing research into the effect of World Trade Center dust exposure on respiratory function, and sleep.  Other important ongoing research involves the effects of air pollution on development of lung injury as well as basic research and clinical trials in the mechanisms and treatment of asthma, clinical trials in the treatment of cystic fibrosis and epidemiological studies determining the metabolic, cardiovascular and neurocognitive consequences of obstructive sleep apnea and research in the field of global health and social determinants of health. Finally, a newly formed Division of Sleep Research under the leadership of Dr. Mariana G. Figueiro who is a world expert in Light therapy and Circadian Biology enhances the division’s research portfolio.

Jag Sunderram, MD

Professor of Medicine

Interim Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine