Mariana Gerschenson, Ph.D.

Dr. Gerschenson is the Director for the Diabetes Research Center at the University of Hawaii and the PI of the NIH funded 2P20GM113134, ‘COBRE-Diabetes’. She is the Associate Dean for Research and Professor in the Dept. of Cell and Molecular Biology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. She is a national/international leader in the field of studying pediatric and adult cardiovascular and metabolic complications for the past 30 years. She is a translational researcher who is studying the mitochondrial etiology of HIV pediatric cardiovascular disease. She has demonstrated that antiretroviral medications result in mitochondrial dysfunction in non-human primates (PMID: 10791874 and 15000702). She is currently studying longitudinally the cardiovascular status of perinatally HIV-infected adolescents and young adults and to explore whether chronic inflammation and/or mitochondrial abnormalities are associated with echocardiographic and biomarker changes over time (R01 HL137558; 5R21AI170252).