As a board-certified pediatrician practicing hospitalist medicine, Dr. Berger spends her time working as the delivery team attending at Prentice, in the neonatal intensive care units at both Prentice and Lurie, and also in the observation unit practicing general pediatric medicine. She also spends her team conducting research in the areas described below, teaching medical students, as well as pediatric and emergency medicine residents. She has a particular interest in breastfeeding medicine and is pursing her certification as an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC).

I joined the Child Abuse Division at Lurie Children’s Hospital in December 2016. I completed residency training in pediatrics at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte NC, and remained there as Chief Pediatric Resident. I then completed fellowship training in Child Abuse Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where I developed a particular interest in the health of children in foster care. Since joining the faculty at Lurie Children’s, I have developed projects focused on clinical quality improvement and understanding the experiences of marginalized youth within foster ...

I received my medical degree from the University of Louisville School of Medicine in 2005, prior to completing my Pediatrics residency at the University of Texas Southwestern/Children's Medical Center Dallas. I completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in 2015 and a fellowship in Developmental Therapeutics in 2016 at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University/Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. I subsequently became a member of the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology division with a specialization in Solid Tumors at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Ch...

My research is focused on improving clinical efficacy for inpatient pediatric care and atopic diseases in young children.  As the Director of Clinical Research at Northwestern's Center for Food Allergy and Asthma, I am engaged in projects involving anaphylaxis, food allergy, atopic dermatitis, and asthma. I am also the hospital lead for the Pediatric Research Inpatient in Settings (PRIS) projects, a national collaboration dedicated to improving and advancing care of inpatient pediatric medicine. 

My primary clinical interest is in infections in immunocompromised patients, including stem cell and solid organ transplant recipients. I am involved in numerous clinical trials involving anti-infectives, in both the immunocompromised population and in situations involving other pediatric infections. I also study the pathogenesis of viral encephalitis, using models which focus on host-pathogen interactions in neurologic disease due to herpes simplex virus in newborns.

A major pediatric research priority and the long-term goal of my laboratory is the identification of the etiology and pathogenesis of Kawasaki Disease (KD), the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed nations. KD can result in coronary artery aneurysm (CAA) formation with resultant myocardial infarction and/or sudden death. Clinical and epidemiologic data are consistent with an infectious cause of KD, but the etiologic agent remains unknown.We hypothesize that a "new" virus enters through the respiratory tract and infects bronchial epithelium, traveling in macrophages ...

Dr. Kumar has worked as an academic allergist at Lurie Children's for over 18 years. He has a number of research interests. Most prominently he is interested in the prenatal and early life exposures, which in combination with genetic factors are associated with the development of early childhood wheezing, atopic disease and asthma. Dr. Kumar also has interests in a number of other areas including:the determinants of lung function from childhood into later adult life (CARDIA study), development of food allergy in early infancy, and validation of PROMIS instruments in asthma (AAD-PEPR study). A...

Youyang Zhao, Ph.D., is William G. Swartchild, Jr. Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the Program for Lung and Vascular Biology, and Head of the Injury, Repair and Regeneration Neighborhood at the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. He is Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine), and Pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and member of the Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute. Dr. Zhao joined Lurie Children’s in July 2017 from the University of I...

My primary areas of clinical interest are preventive cardiology (obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and screening) as well as inpatient and outpatient diagnosis and management of congenital heart disease. I enjoy educating medical students, residents and fellows through bedside teaching as well as formal didactic lectures. My main areas of research interestinclude the effect of obesity on the cardiovascular system of children and adults.