Study team

Meet the investigators leading RETRIAL

RETRIAL is led by a multidisciplinary team with expertise in CF psychiatry, clinical psychology, and hepatology.

Anna M. Georgiopoulos, MD

Principal Investigator

Anna M. Georgiopoulos, MD, Principal Investigator, is a triple board-certified physician in adult psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and consultation-liaison psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was the inaugural Chair (and current Chair Emeritus) of the CF Foundation's Prioritizing Research in Mental Health Working Group (PRIME), chairs the Education & Training subgroup of the CF Foundation Mental Health Advisory Committee, and is a member of the CF Foundation Sexual Health, Reproduction, and Gender Research Working Group (SHARING). She serves as the US liaison to the European CF Society Mental Health in the Era of CFTR Modulators Working Group. Dr. Georgiopoulos leads studies in CF mental health and palliative care. Her clinical research focus is to investigate the psychiatric complications of CF and its treatments, and to develop systems of care to improve the physical and emotional wellness of people with CF throughout the lifespan. She is a recipient of the Carolyn and C. Richard Mattingly Leadership in Mental Health Care Award from the CF Foundation.

CJ Bathgate, PhD

Principal Investigator

CJ Bathgate, PhD, Principal Investigator, is a clinical health psychologist for the adult CF team at National Jewish Health. She is the current Chair of the CF Foundation's PRIME working group. She is interested in exploring the impact of CFTR modulators on mental health and neurocognition, having observed various mental health complications following the start of the elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor (ETI, or TRIKAFTA) treatment in her CF clinic, which serves over 600 adults with CF annually. She created the Coping and Learning to Manage Stress with CF (CALM) program for adults, serving as PI of its multisite randomized controlled trial, and is co-investigator on several other multisite trials focused on mental health, sleep, wellness, and CF. She is currently a recipient of the CF Foundation's Clinical Research Scholars Program Award.

Janis Stoll, MD

Co-Investigator

Janis Stoll, MD, Co-Investigator, is a board certified in pediatrics, pediatric gastroenterology and pediatric transplant hepatology at Washington University School of Medicine. She is the Medical Director of Pediatric Transplant Hepatology at St Louis Children's Hospital. She was the center's primary investigator for the multi-center cystic fibrosis liver disease cohort study (PUSH) investigating longitudinal imaging characteristics in cystic fibrosis disease patients. She also was on the multidisciplinary writing group through the CF Foundation for screening, evaluation and management consensus recommendations.

Julia Boster, MD

Co-Investigator

Julia Boster, MD, Co-Investigator, is a board-certified pediatric gastroenterologist and hepatologist at Children's Hospital Colorado, with a clinical and research focus on chronic liver disease, including cystic fibrosis (CF) associated liver disease. She serves as one of her center's leads for the management of CF with hepatobiliary involvement and has significant experience in this area given the large size of the CF population served at her center.

Katie Kirby, LCSW

Co-Investigator

Katie Kirby, LCSW, Co-Investigator, is an adult with CF, a licensed clinical social worker, and a member of the CF Foundation Prioritizing Research in Mental Health Working Group (PRIME). As part of the study team, Mrs. Kirby provides the patient perspective to all aspects of study planning, protocol design, and recruitment.

Kristin Riekert, PhD

Co-Investigator

Kristin Riekert, PhD, Co-Investigator, is a professor and behavioral health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. In her role as co-chair of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Success with Therapies Research Consortium and its Director of Data Management Core, she has led or managed multisite observational studies examining factors that affect people with CF's mental health, treatment burden, and overall well-being, as well as interventional studies to support CF self-management. She is the principal investigator of several ongoing interventional studies, including the CF Wellness program, designed to reduce fatigue and improve sleep, and the OnTrackCF mHealth application, which supports adherence to CFTR modulators and tracks symptoms.

Emma M. Tillman, PharmD, PhD

Co-Investigator

Emma M. Tillman, PharmD, PhD, Co-Investigator, is a pediatric clinical pharmacist and researcher at Indiana University School of Medicine, specializing in using pharmacogenomics to enhance medication safety and optimize medication use. Since joining the faculty of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, she has worked closely with the Indiana University Grand Challenge Precision Health Initiative group to implement pharmacogenomic testing to guide therapy at Indiana University Health. In addition to her implementation efforts, her research is focused on drug-drug interactions and adverse drug reactions associated with CFTR modulator therapy.

Lael Yonker, MD

Co-Investigator

Lael Yonker, MD, Co-Investigator, is a board-certified pediatric pulmonologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She serves as Chief of the Division of Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine and Medical Director of the Children's Pulmonary Translational Research Center. Dr. Yonker holds the Pogue Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Pulmonology Medicine. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Yonker integrates clinical pulmonary care with translational research to improve outcomes for children with complex respiratory disease. Her work bridges mechanistic studies in patient-derived samples with hypothesis-driven clinical trials to identify and interrupt maladaptive inflammatory pathways. The goal of her scientific program is to define infection-driven mechanisms that lead to airway and systemic disease in children and leverage these insights to develop targeted therapies.