His research interest is focused on clinical and translational surgical infectious diseases research, with a specific interest in musculoskeletal infectious diseases (MSK ID). His interest in this aspect of infectious disease started when he was in fellowship at the University of Maryland. During that time, he helped conduct a longitudinal prospective study evaluating the use of adjuvant intraarticular antibiotics in the treatment of recalcitrant prosthetic joint infections. This allowed him to gain knowledge in prosthetic joint infection treatments and in surgical infectious disease in general. He subsequently joined as faculty at the University of Maryland to further conduct clinical and translational research in surgical infections. Over the past six years, he has started to test novel therapeutics in the treatment of prosthetic joint infections. These include the use of bacteriophages to treat recalcitrant prosthetic joint infections, as well as other novel therapeutics. He has devised novel protocols to apply these agents clinically and has a patent pending for a protocol to use bacteriophages in the treatment of prosthetic joint infections. Moreover, he is the PI on a multicenter prosthetic joint infection clinical trial using adjuvant phage therapy that will start in 2022.
As well, he has spearheaded a novel study evaluating the use of calcium sulfate biodegradable antibiotic beads in the treatment of vascular graft infections, and he is currently leading a project to test a novel diagnostic alpha defensins in the diagnosis of nosocomial ventriculitis. Beyond these research projects, he has treated numerous patients in novel ways to reduce morbidity and prevent mortality in these patients and has published some of these case reports. In addition, he is developing a MSK ID multidisciplinary team/approach here at the University of Maryland with the orthopedic department to reduce morbidity and mortality in MSK ID patients. Lastly, he has formed strong collaborations with Dr. Ken Urish at the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Ben Chan at Yale University, as well as with other investigators in the USA and in Europe.