Affiliation: Cedars Sinai Medical Center

Robert Barrett obtained his PhD in Neuroscience at University College Cork in Ireland and subsequently moved to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in 2007. Dr. Barrett’s research focus switched to gastroenterology when he joined the F. Widjaja Foundation Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute and he began to develop new models to study what role the intestinal epithelium played in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). His research now utilizes an array of innovative technologies including induced pluripotent stem cells, human intestinal organoids and small microengineered Chip technology. His current research utilizes all of these innovations and is focused on intestinal fibrosis, which is a common and a potentially serious complication of Crohn’s disease, and on Paneth cell defects in IBD.