Jerry Zimmerman

Jerry, MD, PhD, MCCM, is an Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics within the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM), Seattle Children’s Hospital at the University of Washington, School of Medicine, and a Lecturer at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

Jerry serves on many national leadership committees to advance pediatric critical care research.  As Co-editor of the textbook, Pediatric Critical Care, now in its seventh edition, he is familiar with the academic landscape of PCCM. He has been engaged in sepsis research for over 30 years, essentially since his fellowship training in PCCM.  Accordingly, he holds an international reputation for expertise in this clinical and research arena. He has participated as an inaugural satellite site principal investigator for the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network (CPCCRN) and the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators (PALISI) Network.

More recently, he has served as Chair of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), Discovery Research Network, following his service as President for SCCM. Jerry served as the principal investigator for the multi-institutional, prospective cohort investigation, Life After Pediatric Sepsis Evaluation (LAPSE) (NCT01415180) that examined the trajectory of and risk factors for long-term functional status and health-related quality of life (HRQL) among children encountering septic shock.

He also provided the clinical leadership for the Genotypes and Phenotypes in Pediatric SIRS and Sepsis (GAPPSS) (NCT02728401) prospective descriptive study that evaluated the utility of various gene mRNA expression signatures and proteomics to differentiate critically ill children with bacterial sepsis, severe viral illness and non-infectious systemic inflammation. Recently, he provided senior leadership for an international collaborative (PODIUM) that established contemporary definitions for single and multiple organ dysfunctions. He was a member of the SCCM Taskforce that derived the contemporary Phoenix Pediatric Sepsis Definition. Jerry currently serves as a co-principal investigator for the international Stress Dose Hydrocortisone In Pediatric Septic Shock (SHIPSS) interventional trial (NCT03401398).