Department of Pediatrics

I am an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an attending physician in pediatric pulmonology at Lurie Children’s Hospital. I joined Lurie Children’s in 2019 from Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and Case Western Reserve University where I completed residency and fellowship training in pediatric pulmonology.  My clinical and research focus is on cystic fibrosis. 

I completed complete training in pediatrics and pediatric cardiology as well as adult internal medicine and adult cardiology. This affords me both a unique perspective on the long-term management of patients born with congenital heart disease, but allows me to fully integrate into the care of patients across the full age spectrum. This is reflected in my clinical responsibilities, which range from attending on the consultation service at Lurie Childrens, assessing pediatric patients from neonates to adolescents, to my primary responsibilities attending to adults with congenital heart disease a...

I joined the Northwestern faculty in 1987 after completing a pediatric residency and Academic General Pediatric Fellowship at Children's Memorial Hospital.

A major pediatric research priority and the long-term goal of my laboratory is the identification of the etiology and pathogenesis of Kawasaki Disease (KD), the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed nations. KD can result in coronary artery aneurysm (CAA) formation with resultant myocardial infarction and/or sudden death. Clinical and epidemiologic data are consistent with an infectious cause of KD, but the etiologic agent remains unknown.We hypothesize that a "new" virus enters through the respiratory tract and infects bronchial epithelium, traveling in macrophages ...

Dr. Defne Magnetta completed medical school at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. She then completed her Pediatrics Residency at The Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh from 2013-2016. She completed her fellowship training in Pediatric Cardiology at The Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh from 2016-2019 and served as Chief Pediatric Cardiology Fellow during her final year. Dr. Magnetta completed her Advanced Fellowship in Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplantation at Ann & Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago from 2019-2020, and remained as Faculty following he...

Dr. Paisley is a hospital-based pediatrician. She received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her completed her residency training at the former Children's Memorial Hosital (now Lurie Children's) where she served as chief pediatric resident. Her interests include improving communication with patients and families, and teaching and advising in undergraduate and graduate medical education.

Dr. O'Neill specializes in the comprehensive care of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. She completed her undergraduate degree in psychology and pre-professional studies at the University of Notre Dame, her medical school degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a general pediatrics residency at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, and a neurodevelopmental disabilities combined residency/fellowship at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. She is triple-board certified in General Pediatrics, Neurology with special qualification...

As the Division Head of Hospital Based Medicine Outreach, I have focused much of my clinical interests surrounding clinical simulation activities and quality improvement. More recently, we are using both of these tools to develop pediatric core competencies for the pediatric hospitalist.

My primary interest is in the neurodevelopmental outcome of high-risk infants. My focus involves the early detection of cerebral palsy through various assessments, including The General Movements Assessment. A portion of my clinical time is spent caring for patients in the NICU-Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program. I am also interested in improving the safety of neonatal intubation through quality improvement efforts and the use of innovative tools, such as video laryngoscopy.

Dr. Pachman's translational team studies Juvenile Myositis (JM), an often chronic pediatric systemic vasculopathy associated with skin inflammation and proximal muscle weakness of unknown etiology. Her laboratory has identified genetic, immunologic and environmental factors that play a role in the onset of symptoms and govern outcome. RNASeq, miRNA and Gene expression micro array studies of untreated children's diagnostic muscle biopsies identified massive dysregulation of IFN-a induced genes in JDM. Epigenetic and miRNA studies of diagnostic muscle biopsies indicate critical differences assoc...