14^th World Pediatrics Conference

Dr. Melnick earned his B.SC., Physics and Ph.D, Chemistry at McGill University and M.D. at Queen’s University. He completed his Pathology residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami Beach, FL and subsequently joined the Department of Pathology and Clinical Laboratories at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital where he serves as Department Chief. He directs research involving therapeutic development in cancer, immunology and metabolic disorders since 1999, published more than 85 papers in peer-reviewed journals and acquired intellectual property based on this research. He serves as an editorial board member of the Journal of Natural Products in Cancer Prevention and Therapy

Pediatrics, Pathology, Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic disorders

Dr. Rodrigo Vianna is the Director of the Miami Transplant Institute since January 2013. Prior to this, he has been the Director of Intestinal/Multivisceral transplant at Indiana University, where, under his direction, the intestinal and Multivisceral transplant program has become the largest and most successful program in the world. He continues to perform a large number of liver transplants and to take care of these patients. His stamina, energy and commitment will continue to equip him for a life of achievements He is fully committed to this project as he believes its successful implementation will lead to better understanding of immunosuppression-related complications such as EBV infection and PTLD and most importantly will lead to improved outcomes for our patients.

Replacement of the small intestine, stomach, pancreas, liver and sometimes the kidney, multivisceral transplants are most often used for patients with intestinal failure or digestive disorders who develop complications from intravenous nutrition

Dr. Pierce has successfully obtained imaging data on over several hundred children, both normal and autistic. As the principal investigator of the functional brain imaging core at the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence (ACE), established by NIH in 2007, she is one of only a handful of investigators at UCSD, and nationwide, who is utilizing sleep fMRI as a research tool to study the functional brain development of babies at-risk for autism as young as 12-months in age. Given that autism is typically not diagnosed until 2–3 years of age, she has been training a network of pediatricians throughout San Diego County on her innovative procedure—the 1-Year Well-Baby Check-Up Approach—for detecting infants and toddlers at-risk for autism at the earliest age possible. The procedure, which uses biological and behavioral profiles, was designed and developed by Dr. Pierce to identify children who are missing significant social milestones by their 1-year checkups. Dr. Pierce will be expanding this research track as a co-investigator and leader of the Clinical Phenotype: Recruitment and Assessment Core, at the UCSD ACE. Participating San Diego-area pediatricians, as they identify at-risk infants, will be referring the families to the UCSD ACE for free evaluations. Dr. Pierce also focuses on the use of eye tracking technology to establish patterns of eye gaze that may signify risk in babies. In late 2010 she discovered that babies at-risk for autism as young as 12-months spend greater time visually examining geometric patterns than they do social patterns. This newly described attribute of babies at-risk for autism which received worldwide press may aid in earlier diagnoses. Dr. Pierce’s growing recognition and stature in the field of autism research is evidenced by invited lectures at the national and international levels. Additionally, she has served as an ad hoc reviewer for several well-regarded journals, including Archives of General Psychiatry, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Journal of Child Psychology, and Brain. Her research is funded by several grants from the National Institute of Mental Health as well as private organizations such as Autism Speaks, National Foundation for Autism Research, and the Organization for Autism Research.

r. Pierce’s research program is to elucidate the neural underpinnings of these social deficits in autism. Her studies have utilized several approaches, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and behavioral assays