The Children’s Medical Research Institute has announced its recruits for four pediatric research chairs in an effort to enhance specialized pediatric care for Oklahomans in the department of pediatrics at the OU College of Medicine.

David Frank Crawford was appointed to the CMRI Tripp Lewallen Chair and was the assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before coming to OU. Crawford’s research centers on cell division in cancer cells and how they respond to chemotherapy agents. The focus of his work is to identify underlying causes of cancer and to find new and improved ways to treat malignancies.

Mark Ferguson joined the CMRI endowed chair program as holder of the CMRI Harris D. Riley Jr., M.D. Endowed Chair in Pediatric Student Education. Ferguson has won multiple teaching awards, and his research interests include hypothyroidism in Down syndrome and furthering novel methods of medical education.

Paul Darden joined CMRI’s physician-scientist team as the holder of the CMRI James Paul Linn Endowed Chair in Pediatrics. Darden previously worked at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. His research focuses on the delivery of primary care, including vaccines to children. He also supports practice-based research to generate applicable ideas for clinical research.

James Jarvis was appointed to the CMRI Arthritis Foundation Oklahoma Chapter Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology. Before being recruited, Jarvis was the Director of Pediatric Rheumatology at the Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center since August 1997. He has also worked as a Consultant Rheumatologist at the W.W. Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah since October 2003. He has won multiple awards, and his research interests include using genomic technologies to understand interactions that occur through the immune system in juvenile arthritis and other inflammatory disorders, including infections in newborns.