About
Charles B. Cairns, MD, is the Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Dean of the College of Medicine and senior vice president for medical affairs at Drexel University. He is a leader in emergency medicine and critical care education, training and research. Dr. Cairns has been leading Drexel through partnership with St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, new regional clinical campuses in Pennsylvania, California and North Carolina, and the opening of a new four-year regional medical campus, the College of Medicine at Tower Health in West Reading. These efforts have resulted in record medical student applications, student enrollment and extramural research funding.
Previously, he served as dean of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University and as dean of the College of Medicine and assistant vice president for clinical research at the University of Arizona. Dr. Cairns led the University of Arizona College of Medicine through a $1.2 billion merger with Banner Health, which resulted in one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States. He has also served as chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of North Carolina, associate chief of emergency medicine at Duke University and director of emergency medicine research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the world’s largest academic research organization.
Dr. Cairns has served as director of the NIH United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group and as principal investigator of the DHS National Collaborative for Biopreparedness. Most recently, he has led COVID-19 research and innovation efforts to understand the acute and longitudinal immune response to severe SARS-CoV-2 infection through several projects, including as a clinical lead for the NIAID COVID-19 Immunophenotyping (IMPACC) study and the DSMB of the NHLBI convalescent plasma study, and as principal investigator of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project on the prediction of COVID-19 community infection and recovery.
He has published over 200 scientific articles and reviews and secured more than $40 million in research funding. Some of his honors and awards include the Outstanding Contribution in Research Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Established Investigator Award from the Emergency Medicine Foundation, the National Foundation of Emergency Medicine Mentor Scholar Award, the Presidential Citation Award from the Society for Critical Care Medicine, and the John Marx Leadership Award from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the highest award in the field. He has served on the editorial boards of Annals of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Cairns serves on the St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children board and the board of the Eureka Institute for Translational Medicine, and he is the board president of the National Foundation of Emergency Medicine
Dr. Cairns is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College and received his medical degree from the University of North Carolina, where he was a Holderness Medical Fellow and received the Medical Faculty Award as the outstanding graduating medical student. He completed his residency in emergency medicine and fellowship in cardiovascular research at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and the American Heart Association.