Dr. Houle is Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Houle received a PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology and has specialized in statistical methods ever since. Dr. Houle is a NIH funded researcher and has published articles on statistical power analyses, statistical reporting, chronic pain, headache, anesthesia history, Bayesian statistics and the statistical evaluation of biomarkers. He has served as a Statistical Consultant to Headache since 2004 and was previously the Statistical Editor of Anesthesiology where he helped formulate statistical policy and reviewed accepted manuscripts. Since 2004 Dr. Houle has reviewed more than 6000 manuscripts while providing constructive criticism for authors under peer review, and lectures on manuscript preparation and statistical reporting for medical journals. Dr. Houle will serve as the blinded statistician for the MINDDS II clinical trial, leading the statistical analysis and planning.

Susana Vacas, MD, PhD, is a neuroanesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Member of the Faculty of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining MGH Dr. Vacas completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco, where her research focused on the underlying mechanisms and risk factors of perioperative neurocognitive disorders. Dr. Vacas seeks to improve perioperative brain health and overall patient outcomes after surgery by blocking and/or alleviating exacerbated inflammation and brain lesions. Her work deploys emerging technologies to improve patient outcomes, whether through innovative benchwork techniques, the creation of molecular targets, extensive cognitive assessment models, or new MRI tools. In the MINDDS II trial Dr. Vacas lends her expertise both to the conduct of the study as well as conceptual issues arising from overall coordination and management of clinical questions and considerations across sites.

Dr. Huffman is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Cardiac Psychiatry Research Program in the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Psychiatry and Medicine. He previously received his Doctor of Medicine from Baylor College of Medicine and completed his residency at MGH. Dr. Huffman’s research interests include psychology, health behavior, and cardiovascular disease. He also serves as the Associate Chief for Clinical Services in the Department of Psychiatry at MGH and the Director of Inpatient Psychiatry Research at MGH. As a result of his research interests, Dr. Huffman has extensive experience in the conduct of clinical trials and has selected several of the neurocognitive instruments utilized in the present trial. Through his role in the MINDDS II study, Dr. Huffman provides expertise in the performance of neurocognitive and delirium assessments, assists in staff training, and provides expertise in interpreting the neurocognitive data.

Dr. Tina McKay is an Instructor of Investigation in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 2017, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Tufts University, and a research fellowship at Mass Eye and Ear. Dr. McKay was recruited to MGH as a Research Scientist in August 2020 and promoted to an Instructor in September 2022. Dr. McKay was recently awarded a multi-PI R21 grant studying metabolic factors and delirium. Dr. McKay’s research focuses on discovering novel biomarkers associated with postoperative delirium, with the goal to develop targeted therapies to promote cognitive resilience during surgery. Her interests are in the application of biomarkers as endpoint markers in clinical trials and the translational aspects involved in the validation of prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers to study clinical outcomes. This closely aligns with her role on the MINDDS II study, where she oversees the biomarker analyses for the project.

Jason Qu, MD, is a cardiac anesthesiologist in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Qu previously received his medical degree from Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences in Jilin, China, before undergoing residencies at both Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Qu also completed a fellowship at both Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. As one of the primary investigators for the pilot MINDDS I study, Dr Qu brings expertise in protocol implementation and study design for the MINDDS II trial. Dr. Qu is also widely regarded as the go-to facilitator for studies spanning both cardiac surgery and anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. In the MINDDS II study he leverages this role and provides day-to-day support for clinical research team members in navigating the perioperative environment for cardiac surgery, including implementing drug administration, safety monitoring and reporting for enrolled MINDDS II study participants.

Dr. Wiener-Kronish is the Distinguished Henry Isaiah Dorr Professor of Research and Teaching in Anaesthetics and Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and was previously the Anesthetist-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital between April 2008 and December 2019. Dr. Wiener-Kronish obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1971 and then obtained her Doctor in Medicine in 1976 from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). It was there that she completed her residency in Internal Medicine in 1979, a pulmonary clinical and research fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Institute in 1984, and residency in anesthesia in 1986. She is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary, anesthesia and critical care medicine. She obtained tenure at UCSF in 1992 and became a Professor of Anesthesia and Medicine in 1996. Dr. Wiener-Kronish has devoted a lot of her academic career to investigating the mechanism for acute lung injury, which affects patients in the intensive care unit. In the present study Dr. Wiener-Kronish will leverage her experience in the ICU and provide critical insight into study design and implementation.

Ariel is the Administrative Director for Research in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. In this role she also oversees the Anesthesia Research Center (ARC) team, which will serve as the Clinical and Data Coordinating Center for MINDDS II. Prior to joining MGH Ariel worked both as a statistician and clinical research specialist. Ariel brings extensive experience in grant preparation, study design and implementation, project management, research regulations and statistical analyses. Ariel previously graduated from Boston University with a Masters of Arts in biostatistics, and a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Statistics from Simmons College. In addition to her role within the Anesthesia Research Center, Ariel is currently an Associate in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and serves as a statistical consultant for several different academic medical centers. In the MINDDS II study Ariel serves as a Clinical Trials Specialist, with regulatory oversight of all participating centers.