About PIDS

Debra Palazzi, MD, MEd is Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX. Her academic interests center on antimicrobial stewardship and medical education. She is Editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics Nelson’s Pediatric Antimicrobial Therapy and Associate Editor of JAMA Pediatrics. She has proudly served PIDS on the Board of Directors since 2016, the Pediatric Committee on Antimicrobial Stewardship (2016-2022), Education Committee (2017-2022), Finance Committee (2021-present), and Compensation Committee (2024-present). She is past Secretary-Treasurer of PIDS and now serves as PIDS President. Dr. Palazzi is committed to recruiting and inspiring the next generation of pediatric ID leaders, forging new partnerships to accelerate discovery, and ensuring our expertise shapes policies that protect children’s health worldwide.

William J. Steinbach, MD, is Robert H. Fiser, Jr. MD Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, Chair of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Child Health at UAMS, and the Pediatrician-in-Chief at Arkansas Children’s. For the last 20 years, Dr. Steinbach has led an NIH-funded multi-disciplinary clinical care and research program supporting immunosuppressed children. His molecular, translational, and clinical research focuses on the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of invasive fungal infections and spans broader efforts with all infections in immunocompromised patients. His laboratory centers on the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus to understand the molecular mechanisms of cellular signal transduction in disease, develop novel fungal-specific molecular targets as therapeutics, devise new diagnostic assays, and conduct phase I-IV clinical trials in children. Dr. Steinbach founded and is the Director of the International Pediatric Fungal Network, a global consortium of 55 sites dedicated to investigating pediatric invasive fungal infections through multi-center cooperative studies that has led to the first pediatric-specific guidelines for these diseases. He has co-edited four textbooks, including Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillosis, Feigin & Cherry’s Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, the American Academy of Pediatrics Nelson’s Pediatric Antimicrobial Therapy, and most recently the first textbook in a new subfield: Pediatric Transplant and Oncology Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Jason Newland is the Division Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a Professor of Pediatrics and the Henry G Cramblett Chair in Medicine at The Ohio State University. Prior to joining Nationwide Children’s Hospital, he spent almost 10 years at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO and 8 years at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. His research spotlights the use of antimicrobials and the impact of antimicrobial stewardship programs at children’s hospitals.

Kari A. Simonsen, MD, MBA, FIDSA, FPIDS is the Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Associate Dean for Pediatric Affairs (UNMC), and Pediatrician-in-Chief of Children’s Nebraska. She is a tenured Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and led for over a decade as division chief of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UNMC. She also served previously as the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Director at UNMC, as Hospital Epidemiologist of Children’s Nebraska from 2013-2020 and as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs at UNMC from 2018-2019. Her research experience includes pediatric infection prevention, special pathogens preparedness, and pediatric clinical trials in antimicrobial drug and vaccine development.   She currently serves PIDS as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Board of Directors, and has contributed to PIDS as a longstanding member of the finance committee (2014-present), the program and meetings committee (2019-2024) and the nominations and awards committee (2016-19).