Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter is a UTL Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Stanford University and Staff Physician at Stanford Hospital and Clinics. Her main clinical and research interest is pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). She received her medical training in Tuebingen and Freiburg, Germany and did her Residency and a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Hannover Medical School, where her interest in PAH started. Under the guidance of her mentor Dr. Hoeper, she was involved in the clinical care of PAH patients and was a co-investigator in international clinical trials in PAH studying the effects of prostacyclin analogues (inhaled Iloprost, Beraprost). Yet frustrated by the limited treatment options for PAH she left Hannover in 2002 and joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s research laboratory at Stanford University to learn more about the cellular and molecular biology of PAH with the ultimate goal to eventually develop new therapies for PAH. During her postdoctoral fellowship she focused on genetic and environmental factors involved in the pathogenesis of PAH and studied 2 genes important in PAH, S100A4/Mts1 and BMPR2. In addition she showed that a herpes virus infection lead to the development of pulmonary vascular disease by inducing elastase. Dr. Spiekerkoetter was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship of the American Heart Association/ Pulmonary Hypertension Association.