Dr. Blackwell’s laboratory focuses on molecular signaling events that control lung inflammation, injury, remodeling, and fibrosis. This work is relevant to a number of diseases that are prevalent in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, acute lung injury, and lung cancer. Extensive investigations from his group have defined critical roles for the NF-κB signaling pathway in regulating neutrophilic lung inflammation, lung injury, and pulmonary host defense. His laboratory also investigates basic mechanisms driving chronic airway inflammation and resulting in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and development of lung cancer. In addition, his group studies factors that determine whether lungs repair normally after injury or progress to fibrosis.