Photo

Language
English
Title and Department
Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
Director
Drake Lab
Professional bio

Wonder Drake, MD, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is also the Robert A. Goodwin, Jr. Professor of Medicine, professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, and serves as the inaugural director of the Vanderbilt Sarcoidosis Center of Excellence.

She conducts basic, clinical and translational investigations of mechanisms by which immune cells drive interstitial lung disease progression, particularly sarcoidosis. She is interested in exploring the etiology as well as pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory states. Dr. Drake is currently using polymerase chain reactions to investigate possible infectious etiologies of sarcoidosis. Her lab uses techniques such as in situ hybridization to directly localize microbial nucleic acid in the tissue specimens and molecular microarrays in collaboration with our colleagues at Cleveland Clinic, and Medical University of South Carolina.

In 2022, Dr. Drake was elected to membership in the Association of American Physicians, one of the nation’s most respected medical honor societies. She was previously elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society (2008) and the ASCI (2016). Drake serves as an associate editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In addition to having served or chaired NIH LCMI study sections, she currently serves on the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases intramural Board of Scientific Councilors.

Dr. Drake earned her MD degree from Vanderbilt, served her internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt.

Education