GET TO KNOW YOUR LEADERSHIP
Ryan Maves, MD, FCCP
Read through a Q&A with one of the CHEST Network leaders, Disaster Response and Global Health Section Chair, Ryan Maves, MD, FCCP.
July 26, 2022
Where do you work?
I work at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I’m a Professor of Medicine and Anesthesiology in the sections on Critical Care Medicine and Infectious Diseases. My clinical work is divided between the ICU and transplant/oncology infectious diseases. I joined Wake Forest in 2021 after serving 22 years in the US Navy.
What are your research interests and how does this apply to your position within the Networks?
Research-wise, I do a combination of work on severe viral infections (previously influenza, dengue, and HIV but, lately, mostly COVID-19) and studying the impact of disasters and other public health emergencies on hospitals. I spent a number of years doing tropical medicine research in the Navy, and the Disaster Response and Global Health Section seemed like an easy fit for me within CHEST as a result.
How did you become interested and involved in the Disaster Response and Global Health Section?
Disaster response and global health is an obvious interest for a typical military medical officer, and I’ve been lucky to find such a comfortable professional home in CHEST. I was most directly brought into the Section and its work through some great leaders and mentors, specifically Denny Amundson, Jim Geiling, Jeff Dichter, and Asha Devereaux.
Are you involved in any other activities or volunteer positions at CHEST?
I’ve been the Chair of the CHEST COVID-19 Task Force since October 2020 and am a member of the program committee for the CHEST Annual Meeting. Mostly, I just do what the CHEST staff tells me, though.
What clinical research is most interesting to you right now?
My research has tended to be pretty scattershot over the years. I’m still working on a couple of COVID-19 clinical trials, one for an investigational new agent as Site Principal Investigator and also as a subinvestigator for the ACTIV-4 trials of anticoagulant strategies. I’m looking forward to branching out again, though. One of my fellows and I are going to be studying the utility of different predictive models for acute deterioration following hospitalization. Our group here at Wake Forest is also getting ready to start a phase 1, first-in-humans trial for a low-cost, easy-to-manufacture SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that could serve as a booster following mRNA vaccination, in collaboration with some old friends in the Navy.
What are your hobbies?
Well, for the last 2 years, my hobby has been “the pandemic.” I’m looking forward to getting back to some of my old activities, like going to live music shows and doing some traveling.
What is something you cannot live without (after family and friends)?
I don’t know if there is a thing that I can’t live without, exactly, but the thing that I can’t live with is stasis—there always needs to be a new project, a new challenge, a new problem for me to tackle. I probably hold the record for “shortest attention span” among infectious disease doctors.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with your Network peers?
I’ve been especially lucky over the years to have my wife, Robin, who tolerates my million spinning plates and basically holds our lives together while I rush from project to project. She works as a nurse case manager here at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, which is the first time we’ve worked in the same hospital since I was an intern and she was an ICU nurse. Between military deployments, living overseas, last-minute missions, and my call schedule, she is the glue that holds our family together.
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