My research is based at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, a large academic clinical research organization designed to conduct clinical trials from small local studies to worldwide trials. The focus of my research is bacterial infections: complicated skin and skin structure infections; postoperative wound infections; hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated pneumonia; bacteremia; and endocarditis. Many of these trials are conducted in concert with the pharmaceutical industry in order to register new antibiotics. In addition, as director of infectious diseases at the DCRI I oversee the work of the mycology group, and tuberculosis trials. This work also includes work supported by NIH grants including sepsis trials, the Staph Aureus and Staph Epi Bacteremia Groups, and the International Collaboration of Endocarditis. The team of investigators with whom I work is highly experienced, amazingly productive and wonderfully collegial.