Hrishikesh S. Kulkarni, MD, MSCI, holds the Allan J. Swartz and Roslyn Holt Swartz Women's Lung Health Endowed Chair at the University of California-Los Angeles. His area of expertise is in host-pathogen interactions relevant to the occurrence of acute lung injury (ALI), with a specific focus on the complement system.  He completed his medical school at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai, India and a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Washington University in St Louis. He has completed postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco and Washington University. Prior to UCLA, he was an Associate Professor of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology (with Tenure) at Washington University, where he built a basic-translational research program in lung injury and served as an MPI of the Divisional training grant. 

The overarching goal of his program is to determine how locally active innate immune proteins can be harnessed to mitigate ALI risk in various settings such as infection and lung transplantation, to ultimately reduce the burden of end-stage lung disease. A major focus of their work involves distinguishing locally-derived complement proteins in the lung from those present in the blood, and how they modulate ALI. His laboratory has established in vitro and in vivo models to dissect tissue-specific sources of complement proteins that can be harnessed as therapeutics to mitigate ALI. Additionally, they leverage a robust biorepository of lung tissue, bronchial fluid and DNA from lung transplant recipients to guide and validate their research.