Robert Pickett Dickson, MD

Robert Dickson is the Galen B. Toews Legacy Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Medicine, and an Associate Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. Clinically, he cares for patient in the Critical Care Medicine Unit and serves as the program physician for the Washtenaw County Tuberculosis Clinic.

Dr. Dickson serves as Associate Chief (Research) for the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine and as Deputy Director of the Weil Institute for Critical Care Research & Innovation. He is the Program Director of the University of Michigan’s Multidisciplinary Training Program in Lung Disease (T32HL007749), and Associate Program Director (Research) for the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program.

In the lab, Dr. Dickson complements his clinical and research background in the pathophysiology of lung disease and critical illness with the culture-independent techniques of microbial ecology. Diseases of interest include the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis, pneumonia, pulmonary fibrosis, and lung transplant rejection. His laboratory specializes in integrative translational research, spanning from molecular characterization of respiratory microbiota to animal modeling of sepsis and lung injury to prospective trials of human subjects.

Dr. Dickson's expertise in the study of the microbiome's role in critical illness and lung disease is reflected by first- and senior-author publications in Science Translational Medicine, Nature Microbiology, The Lancet, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He has authored more than 125 publications which have been cited more than 12,000 times. His research is supported by the National Institutes for Health, the European Commission, and institutional support.

He is a Specialist Editor of the European Respiratory Journal, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and a Fellow of the European Respiratory Society.