Prevalence of renal anomalies after urinary tract infections in hospitalized infants less than 2 months of age.

Dr. Smith completed his residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in neonatal medicine at Duke University Medical Center in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He completed an MHS in clinical research from Duke University in 2006 and an MPH in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. His research is focused on pediatric drug safety, neonatal pharmacology, and the epidemiology of neonatal infections. Dr. Smith is or has been the protocol chair for more than 14 studies of drugs in infants and children. He is the Principal Investigator for the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Coordinating Center.

Clinical research related to infectious complications of solid organ and bone marrow transplantation, with a particular interest in the treatment and rapid diagnosis of fungal disease. Training the next generation of Transplant Infectious Disease Physicians is a special focus of mine as the Principal Investigator of our Interdisciplinary T32 Training Program funded the NIH. 

I am involved in 4 major areas of research:
1) Neuroprotection. Working with colleagues from Cell Therapies, we have added to Duke's experience participating in pivotal trials of hypothermia for term newborns with moderate to severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) by completing, with Duke CTSI support,  phase I studies of autologous cord blood cells and allogeneic cord tissue derived mesenchymal stromal cells for these infants.  and developing and currently leading a multicenter, double-blind randomized clinical trial of autologous cord blood cells or placebo in term infants with moderate or severe HIE. 
2) Genomics. We at Duke have been in the NICHD Neonatal Research Network (NRN) since 2001. I led the NRN's development of an Anonymized DNA bank of samples collected from 1,000 extremely low birthweight infants, with phenotype information linked to the samples. This resource has been the basis for multiple candidate gene, and genome wide scan analysis, and has identified variants associated with severe retinopathy of prematurity and necrotizing enterocolitis. We partnered with the Vermont Oxford Network-Rady Genomics collaborative to bring 48 hour turnaround Whole Genome Sequencing to patients in the Duke Intensive Care Nursery, and are continuing work with Medical Genetics faculty to keep Duke at the forefront of testing the effectiveness of applied next-gen sequencing in the NICU. 
3) New Technologies: I  collaborated with Drs. David Millington from Duke and Vamsee Pamula (a Duke Pratt School graduate), from BAEBIES Inc, on prototype new technology devices for use in newborn screening for lysosomal storage disease as well as multiplex chips for screening for hyperbilirubinemia and related conditions, as well as working with Dr. Pamula and Dr. Michael Freemark (Peds Endocrinology) on screening panels for hypoglycemia and hypothyroidism, and with investigators from UAB on an Acute Kidney Injury panel.  I continue active collaborations with Dr. Cynthia Toth and the DARSI lab in pediatric ophthalmology, and Pratt School investigators to develop and apply use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for retinal imaging that will assess associations between retinal neurovascular development, brain development, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. We continue with a comparative trial of the value and effectiveness of utilization of OCT compared with the current standard indirect ophthalmoscopy for ROP screening in the NICU. 
4)Microbiome in Micropreemies and health outcomes of periviable infants.  I have worked with multiple epidemiology researchers to assess practice variation within our center, and within the Neonatal Research Network centers, to identify how variation in practice can influence outcomes, with a particular focus on antibiotic use. This work demonstrated strong associations between high empirical antibiotic use in infants with sterile cultures and subsequent morbidities and mortality. This discovery has led to strong collaborations and new initiatives by early career faculty leading studies of the evolving microbiome, leading to hypothesis generation re: the microbiome and optimal growth in extremely preterm infants.

As a general pediatric urologist, Dr. Wiener is involved with all aspects of pediatric urology as a clinician and researcher.  His research interests are most focused, however, on the urologic management of neurogenic bladder and spina bifida and the molecular biology involving development of the genitourinary tract and disorders.

Dr. Wiener is the principal investigator at Duke for The National Spina Bifida Patient Registry and Urologic Management of Young Children with Spina Bifida protocol administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  These projects began at Duke in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

Dr. Wiener was previously a project director for the P50 Center for Undiagnosed Pediatric and Urogenital Disorders.

Dr. Wiener has served in national leadership positions in pediatric urology including President of the Society of Fetal Urology, Executive Council of Society for Pediatric Urology, and the Examination Committee of the American Board of Urology.  He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Spina Bifida Association