Mark W. Geraci, MD

His research interests center on the role of eicosanoids in the biology of lung cancer and pulmonary vascular diseases. In the realm of lung cancer, his work focuses on early carcinogenesis and chemoprevention. A Phase IIb trial of Iloprost demonstrated, for the first time, that airway dysplasia could be reversed in former smokers using oral Iloprost. In the area of pulmonary hypertension, he is the recipient of the NHLBI R24 for Genomics in Pulmonary Hypertension Consortium Award. He is a member of the PVDOMICS Consortium, designed to apply omics technologies for discovery of new treatments in pulmonary vascular diseases. These efforts are designed to utilize genomic, expression, metabolomic and proteomic approaches to extensively phenotyped cohorts of pulmonary hypertension patients. He is a Co-Principal Investigator on the NHLBI TOPMed award in pulmonary hypertension. TOPMed study is to generate a large set of Omic data to be used in analyses that can lead to new clinically meaningful subtypes of PVD and discover pathways for development of personalized therapies.

Dr. Geraci continues to practice in both outpatient and inpatient arenas. In outpatient, he attends one half day per week in the Pulmonary fellows clinic, where he sees new/return patients and teaches the pulmonary and critical care fellows. On the inpatient side, he attends in the medical intensive care unit, on the teaching service. His assignments have traditionally been four to six weeks per year.
Over his career, Dr. Geraci has held a number of positions directly involved in clinical patient care and the development of clinical services. At the University of Colorado, he was the director of outpatient medical services for the pulmonary division from 1994-2000. He transitioned to the director of inpatient medical services for the University of Colorado Hospital 2001-2006. He was Head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at Colorado from 2004-2015.
From 2015-2020, he was the John B. Hickam Professor and Chair of the Department off Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Importantly, during this time, he led the response to the COVID pandemic, given his experience in hospital operations and expertise in critical care medicine. This approach entailed the re-deployment of specialist for inpatient coverage, the expansion of the hospitalist service, ICU staffing models for COVID surge, and the implementation of selected protocols within the ICU for care of COVID patients, including the use of inhaled Flolan in severe ARDS.

Dr. Geraci completed his BA degree with distinction with a double major in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and Psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. At Colorado, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He is an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his Internal Medicine internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital of the Harvard Medical School. From there, he pursued his fellowship training in Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado. He was an Assistant Professor of Medicine from 1994-2001 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Medicine from 2001-2005. In 2005, he was promoted to Full Professor with Tenure. He was Head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado from 2004-2015. During that time, the division grew in size and stature and became the top-rated Pulmonary program in US News and World Reports. In 2015, he moved to the Indiana University School of Medicine as the John B. Hickam Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He was recruited to the University of Pittsburgh as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor of Interdisciplinary Research in Health Sciences.