Dr. Ryan Branski is the Howard A. Rusk Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Research and the Vice Chair for Research in Rehabilitation Medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He also has appointments in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in the school of medicine and Communicative Sciences and Disorders in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Dr. Branski runs a productive research enterprise encompassing both clinical and laboratory initiatives. His NIH-funded laboratory primarily focuses on wound healing and regenerative approaches to optimized healing in the upper aerodigestive track. Dr. Branski is one of only a few investigators to be named Fellow of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, the American Speech Language Hearing Association, and the American Laryngological Association. In Part 1, Dr Branski discusses: Barriers that had to be overcome to perform rigorous research on COVID-19 after the appearance of this disease among NYU patients; kinds of investigations either presently underway or expect to be undertaken this year at the Rusk Rehabilitation Institute and also within the broader NYU Langone Health system that involve both applied clinical research and disease-related basic research; NYU prioritization of research endeavors; whether any work is being done that entails using monoclonal antibodies in treating patients prior to the availability of vaccines; and time frames involved in anticipating the completion of studies that were described? The discussion in Part 2 included: conducting studies on mental health problems experienced by patients with COVID-19; any studies being done involving patients who experience long-term symptoms after becoming infected with this disease; how studies are being financed; ways in which treatment patterns may have undergone any changes sine coronavirus patients first began to arrive at the hospital; how to deal with the thousands of papers on the topic of coronavirus that have appeared in journals since early in 2020; and research that he currently is involved in conducting.
