Fran Balamuth MD, PhD, MSCE is the Nicholas A. Crognale Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, and also serves as division chief of emergency medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  She did her undergraduate work at Brown University, and completed her MD and PhD in immunobiology at Yale University.  She completed residency in Pediatrics and fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  Dr. Balamuth’s research interests focus on pediatric sepsis recognition using both epidemiologic and translational approaches, for which she has received funding from both the NIH and CDC.   She is the co-PI  with Dr. Weiss of the PROMPT BOLUS trial, a multinational pragmatic trial which compares saline vs balanced fluids in pediatric sepsis, the results of which you will hear about today.   In addition, she co-leads the CHOP Pediatric Sepsis Program, which supports and promotes local clinical, research, educational, and quality improvement initiatives around sepsis. She is an internationally recognized sepsis leader, and has served on the national steering committee for the Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes quality collaborative through the US Children’s Hospital Association, and 3 international task forces focused on defining pediatric sepsis through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine.