Robert Dickson, MD

Dr. Dickson is an Associate Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine and an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology  at the University of Michigan. He received his undergraduate degree from St. John's College in 2000, an M.D. from Duke University in 2007, and completed his Internal Medicine residency at the University of Washington in 2011, after which he served as Chief Medical Resident at Harborview Medical Center from 2011-2012. He completed his fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan and has been a member of the faculty since 2014. 

Dr. Dickson studies the role of the microbiome in lung disease and critical illness. By combining clinical and research expertise in the pathophysiology of pulmonary and critical care medicine with the culture-independent techniques of microbial ecology, he has advanced our understanding of the microbiome’s role in sepsis and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), bacterial pneumonia, lung transplantation, pulmonary fibrosis, and the respiratory tract of healthy individuals. His laboratory specializes in integrative translational research, spanning from molecular characterization of respiratory microbiota to animal modeling of sepsis and lung injury to prospective trials of human subjects. He is a Senior Editor at Microbiome, a Specialist Editor of European Respiratory Journal, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Lancet Respiratory Medicine.