Bio Type: Advisory Board

Dr. Karen M. Puopolo, M.D., Ph.D. is a neonatologist who specializes in neonatal infectious diseases. Dr. Puopolo is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She is a member of the Division of Neonatology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Section Chief for Newborn Medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Puopolo received her undergraduate degree in physics from Yale University, and went on to obtain her M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in molecular physiology from the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She completed Pediatric residency and Neonatal-Perinatal fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Puopolo was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 2000-2014 where she was a physician and researcher at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Channing Laboratory. She began her neonatal research career as a laboratory-based scientist investigating mechanisms of virulence in Group B Streptococcus. Her current research focuses on neonatal sepsis epidemiology and risk assessment. In collaboration with Dr. Gabriel Escobar, she developed and validated models to quantify the risk of neonatal early-onset sepsis. She is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and the CDC to study the impact of neonatal antibiotic exposures on the newborn and early childhood microbiome, and on infant and early childhood growth. Dr. Puopolo is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on the Fetus and Newborn.

Dean, Law School
Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania

Theodore W. Ruger is the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law. He is a scholar of constitutional law, specializing in the study of judicial
authority, and an expert on health law and pharmaceutical regulation.

Ruger holds an A.B. from Williams College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and he was a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Prior to joining the Law School, Ruger practiced law at Ropes; Gray in Boston and Williams; Connolly in Washington, D.C., and began his academic career at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

Ruger joined Penn Law in 2004 and previously served as Deputy Dean of the Law School. He has taught a wide range of classes in constitutional law, health law and regulation, legislation, and food and drug law and policy. He has also served in a variety of critical roles in the school, including three terms as a member of the faculty appointments committee, one as chair and another as co-chair. He also served as an advisor to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

His scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern Law Review, and as the centerpiece of a symposium in Perspectives on Politics, a leading peer-reviewed political science journal.

His current research draws on his broader work on judicial power and constitutionalism, and addresses the manner in which American legal institutions — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have shaped the field of health law over the past two centuries.

Benjamin Sun, MD, MPP, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University Pennsylvania. He is broadly interested in improving the safety and value of emergency department care. His research portfolio has included evaluation of syncope in the emergency department, identification organizational best practices to mitigate emergency department crowding, and evaluation of policy interventions to improve opioid prescribing. He is currently the principal investigator on an NIH funded study to assess the comparative effectiveness of testing and disposition strategies for the evaluation of suspected acute coronary syndrome. This is a prospective multisite study of over 100,000 patients who received an emergency department evaluation for chest pain within an integrated health system.

Dr. Sun and a multispecialty leadership team implemented the “HUP ED 2.0” initiative, which resulted in dramatic improvements in quality, safety, and access to emergency care. HUP ED 2.0 has been recognized by Penn Medicine’s “Patient Experience Team Award” and “HUP Quality and Safety Operations Award.”

Dr. Rachel M. Werner is the Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine as well as the Robert D. Eilers Memorial – William Maul Measey Professor of Health Care Management and Economics at the Wharton School. She is also a physician at the Philadelphia VA.

Over the last 20 years, Dr. Werner has built a foundational research program examining the effects of health care payment and related policies on health care delivery, using methods designed to draw causal inference from observational data. She has investigated the unintended consequences of quality improvement incentives, and was among the first to recognize that public reporting of quality information may worsen racial disparities.