Physician, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Dr. Downes is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and an Attending Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He is a faculty member of the Clinical Futures and the Center for Clinical Pharmacology and the Clinical Director of Solid Organ Transplant Infectious Diseases for the Division of ID at CHOP. He also serves as the Vice Chair of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Research Subcommittee of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS). Dr. Downes' research aims to better understand antimicrobial dose optimization and PK/PD in children. His work is particularly focused on how antimicrobial dosing and administration impacts outcomes, such as organ function recovery, the development of adverse effects, and antimicrobial resistance. The goals of Dr. Downes' research are to develop and implement personalized, target-oriented approaches for dosing of antimicrobials in critically ill children using population PK modeling and Bayesian dose adaptation, as well as identify ways to improve therapeutic drug monitoring in children.