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17th Annual Pediatric Science Day and Research Symposium Is April 10

01/23/2024

The 17th Annual Pediatric Science Day and Research Symposium will be held in Danis Auditorium at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital on Wednesday, April 10.

The visiting professor this year is Joseph W. St. Geme III, M.D., Pediatric Chairman & Pediatrician-in-Chief at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). St. Geme will be presenting “Insights into the Determinants of Bacterial Pathogenicity” during Grand Rounds.

This event is free to attend and is sponsored by the Saint Louis University Department of Pediatrics with the support of the SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Foundation as well as a Mead Johnson educational grant.

Visit the PSD 2024 webpage for updates on the event. The page may also be found by searching the keywords “SLU Pediatric Science Days”.

For any questions, email pediatric_science_days@health.slu.edu and ‘cc’ Sara Bolyard (sara.bolyard@ssmhealth.com), Marina Chisholm (marina.chisholm@ssmhealth.com), and Jane Litzau (jane.litzau@ssmhealth.com) or call 314-577-5606.

About Our Visiting Professor

St. Geme holds the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology Program in the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group. His area of expertise includes bacterial pathogenesis, bacterial colonization, haemophilus influenzae virulence factors, kingella kingae virulence factors, meningitis, respiratory tract infections, and osteoarticular infections.

Among St. Geme's achievements are more than 130 publications and several discoveries, including the discovery of three families of H. influenzae adhesive proteins (HMW1/HMW2, Hia/Hsf, Hap) that have potential as vaccine antigens and the discovery of a novel subfamily of bacterial autotransporter proteins, referred to as "trimeric autotransporters."

St. Geme has received several professional awards throughout his career and has been elected to the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Pediatric Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Medicine. His long-term goals are to identify candidate vaccine antigens and to elucidate common mechanisms in bacterial pathogenesis that will serve as targets for new antimicrobials with activity against of a wide range of pathogenic gram-negative bacteria.

St. Geme received a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University in 1979. He earned his Doctor of Medicine (1984) degree from the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his pediatric residency and a chief residency at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and pursued postdoctoral training in microbiology and infectious diseases at Stanford University.