SPR Welcomes New Committee Chairs & Council Structure
The Society for Pediatric Research® (SPR) is pleased to welcome Samudragupta Bora, PhD, Adam Dziorny, MD, PhD, and Thomas J. Mariani, PhD, to serve on the Society’s leadership Council. Each of the newly appointed Chairs has served as a member of their respective committees, bringing years of experience and continued commitment to advancing SPR’s mission.
The new leadership structure reflects the implementation of the Society’s strategic plan. Under this plan, the SPR Council includes Chairs of the Membership, Advocacy, JEDI, Organizational Partnerships, and Pediatric Scientist Development Committees, alongside the Executive Council. Their expanded leadership provides greater opportunities to bring committee experience to Council discussions and Society-wide initiatives.
The Executive Council is composed of the SPR President, President-Elect, Past President, and Strategy and Operations Officer. The broader SPR leadership brings together the Executive Council members and committee chairs who represent key areas of the Society’s work and member engagement.
SPR welcomes Dr. Bora, Dr. Dziorny, and Dr. Mariani to their new roles:
Samudragupta Bora, PhD
JEDI Chair (2026-2029)
UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital
Samudragupta Bora, PhD, is the Founding Director of the University Hospitals Health Services Research Center and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Dr. Bora’s research focuses on improving neurodevelopmental outcomes for high-risk infants through comprehensive characterization of long-term outcomes and examination of the neurological and social factors that shape development. His work also focuses on developing and implementing scalable models of neurodevelopmental follow-up, particularly in resource-limited settings.
Adam Dziorny, MD, PhD
Organizational Partnerships Chair (2026-2029)
University of Rochester Medicine
Adam Dziorny, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Rochester Medicine. A pediatric intensivist, clinical informaticist, and biomedical engineer, his work focuses on using clinical informatics, data science, machine learning, and clinical decision support to improve the quality and outcomes of care for critically ill children.
His research program includes NIH- and AHRQ-funded work addressing acute kidney injury, fluid management, laboratory overuse, and the development of scalable clinical decision-support approaches, with an emphasis on translating multicenter clinical data into tools that are useful at the bedside.
Dr. Dziorny has a particular interest in building collaborative research infrastructure and partnerships that enable pediatric investigators to address questions that cannot be answered within a single institution. He currently chairs the Pediatric ICU Data Collaborative, serves on the Member Advisory Board of the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators (PALISI) Network, and previously chaired PALISI’s Pediatric Data Science and Analytics subgroup. As Chair of the Organizational Partnerships Committee and a member of the SPR Leadership Council, Dr. Dziorny will work to strengthen relationships between SPR and partner organizations across pediatric research.
Thomas J. Mariani, PhD
Advocacy Committee Lead (2026-2028)
University of Rochester
Thomas J. Mariani, PhD is a Professor at the University of Rochester. The broad objectives of Dr. Mariani’s laboratory are to identify the genetic mechanisms of susceptibility to chronic lung diseases, particularly focusing upon their developmental antecedents and the influence of environmental factors. Recent efforts have also investigated biomarkers and disease mechanisms involved in infant respiratory infection.
Dr. Mariani’s research program focuses upon defining regulatory networks involved in lung development and maturation, and which may be perturbed in diseased states. His laboratory uses a combination of animal modeling research and studies of human subjects. He is a leader in the application of genomics methods to pulmonary biology and lung disease.
If you are an SPR Member interested in joining a committee, the call for SPR National Leadership Service Opportunities opens annually in conjunction with the Pediatric Academic Society (PAS) Meeting. Watch for announcements in your inbox or contact info@societyforpediatricresearch.org with any questions.
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About the Society for Pediatric Research®
The Society for Pediatric Research® (SPR) encourages and supports pediatric research endeavors by cultivating a diverse network of child health researchers through collaboration, community, mentorship, and advocacy. Collaboration among SPR members creates meaningful progress for the future of children’s health. For more information, please visit www.societyforpediatricresearch.org, and follow us on LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.
