Top Researchers
Top Medicine Researchers at University of Iowa for 2026
The University of Iowa has a broad and active research footprint in medicine, with work spanning clinical care, diagnostics, and methods that support better decision-making across specialties. Looking across the last year of publications, a few clear threads stand out: respiratory health, physiology, neurology, and imaging all appear repeatedly.
Below, you’ll see a snapshot of researchers whose recent work reflects that range, from studies of lung disease and pregnancy health to stroke care, voice disorders, and lymphoma. Together, their publications show how medicine at the University of Iowa connects patient care with practical tools, data-driven analysis, and ongoing clinical insight.
Featured Researchers
Edgar A. Samaniego
Edgar A. Samaniego focused on neurology and emergency care questions around stroke treatment, including aspiration thrombectomy and anesthesia choice during endovascular therapy.
Activity over the last year: 35 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- SUMMIT MAX: A Randomized Trial of the Super Large Bore HiPoint Reperfusion System Versus Vecta System for Aspiration Thrombectomy (May 2025)
- Sedation vs General Anesthesia for Endovascular Therapy in Acute Ischemic Stroke (Oct 2025)
- Super-large bore catheter in the treatment of large vessel occlusions: initial multicenter experience (Apr 2025)
Kara M. Whitaker
Kara M. Whitaker’s recent work linked obstetrics and gynecology with physiology and public health through studies of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and cardiovascular health during pregnancy and postpartum.
Activity over the last year: 32 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Sedentary Behavior and Light-Intensity Physical Activity During Pregnancy and Cardiovascular Health: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association (Apr 2025)
- Associations of physical activity and sedentary time with aortic stiffness and autonomic function in early pregnancy (Feb 2025)
- Compliance and Impact of a 5-Min Seated Rest Protocol on Home Blood Pressure Monitoring in Postpartum Women (Aug 2025)
Franklin Dexter
Franklin Dexter examined emergency medicine and cardiology topics ranging from anesthesia workforce assessment to postoperative mortality and reporting methods for anesthesiology research.
Activity over the last year: 27 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- United States' anesthesia workdays in 2022–2023 – Implications for national workforce assessments (Sep 2025)
- Inpatient Postoperative Mortality: Comparing Patients Hospitalized Preoperatively to Those Having Elective Surgery (Mar 2025)
- Estimating sample means and standard deviations from the log-normal distribution using medians and quartiles: evaluating reporting requirements for primary and secondary endpoints of meta-analyses in anesthesiology (Apr 2025)
Sean B. Fain
Sean B. Fain centered his recent work on radiology and pulmonary medicine, especially CT-based emphysema assessment, comprehensive lung screening, and imaging frameworks for low-dose screening.
Activity over the last year: 31 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- The Use of Computed Tomography Densitometry for the Assessment of Emphysema in Clinical Trials: A Position Paper from the Fleischner Society (Mar 2025)
- Paradigm shift in early detection: Lung cancer screening to comprehensive CT screening (Jan 2025)
- Action plan for an international imaging framework for implementation of global low-dose CT screening for lung cancer (Feb 2025)
Eric J. Hunter
Eric J. Hunter connected physiology, psychology, and artificial intelligence in studies of therapeutic links between voice and swallowing, voice fatigue subtyping, and machine-learning approaches to screening voice disorders.
Activity over the last year: 22 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
Eric A. Hoffman
Eric A. Hoffman concentrated on pulmonary medicine and imaging, with recent publications on CT densitometry, deep-learning estimation of small airway disease, and quantitative CT textures in COPD.
Activity over the last year: 36 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- The Use of Computed Tomography Densitometry for the Assessment of Emphysema in Clinical Trials: A Position Paper from the Fleischner Society (Mar 2025)
- Deep Learning Estimation of Small Airway Disease from Inspiratory Chest Computed Tomography: Clinical Validation, Repeatability, and Associations with Adverse Clinical Outcomes in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Mar 2025)
- Association of Lung Quantitative CT Scan Textures With Systemic Inflammation and Mortality in COPD (Apr 2025)
Alejandro P. Comellas
Alejandro P. Comellas worked across pulmonary medicine, physiology, and toxicology, with recent studies on multidimensional COPD diagnosis, CT-based small airway disease, and lung function decline in people with smoking history.
Activity over the last year: 32 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- A Multidimensional Diagnostic Approach for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (May 2025)
- Deep Learning Estimation of Small Airway Disease from Inspiratory Chest Computed Tomography: Clinical Validation, Repeatability, and Associations with Adverse Clinical Outcomes in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Mar 2025)
- Respiratory Exacerbations and Lung Function Decline in People with Smoking History and Normal Spirometry (Feb 2025)
Eric Mou
Eric Mou’s recent publications in pathology and neurology focused on lymphoma risk modeling, individualized prediction tools, and treatment outcomes in Hodgkin lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma.
Activity over the last year: 31 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- The A-HIPI prediction model in advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma: identification of risk groups and creation of an online tool (Jan 2025)
- Benefit of rituximab maintenance after first-line bendamustine-rituximab in patients with mantle cell lymphoma (Dec 2025)
- An Individualized Prediction Model for Early-Stage Classic Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (Jun 2025)
What University of Iowa's Medicine Community Is Working On
The most common subfields point to a strong community focus on pulmonary and respiratory medicine, with physiology also appearing frequently across the featured researchers. That combination suggests sustained attention to lung disease, functional measurement, and the clinical interpretation of imaging and respiratory outcomes. Neurology and atomic and molecular physics, and optics also appear in multiple profiles, reflecting work that ranges from stroke care and voice disorders to CT-based imaging methods. Overall, the research community is actively connecting diagnosis, measurement, and patient-centered care across several medically important areas.- Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine - seen across 4 of the featured researchers
- Physiology - seen across 3 of the featured researchers
- Neurology - seen across 2 of the featured researchers
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics - seen across 2 of the featured researchers
- Epidemiology - seen across 1 of the featured researchers
These researchers offer a useful view of how medical scholarship at the University of Iowa is moving across specialties while staying closely tied to real clinical questions. If you’d like to keep tracking discoveries, explore more of the institution’s recent output and consider using Resub to streamline citation discovery, manuscript formatting, and submission preparation for your own work.
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