Dr. Ahn's clinical work is in the pediatric intensive care unit, where many of the sickest children in the hospital are suffering the consequences of respiratory failure. Care for these children has changed very little over the past few decades and is limited to supportive care such as antibiotics, ventilator support and nutrition. Her experience caring for these children has compelled Dr. Ahn to investigate the mechanisms that underly the severe respiratory disease that we see in children and the sometimes abnormal and devastating response to rather common pathogens.

To accomplish this goal, Dr. Ahn has devoted her research time to the study of innate immune cell recruitment and related signaling pathways in response to multi-drug resistant bacteria in pulmonary infections. Under the mentorship of Dr. Alice Prince, Dr. Ahn has utilized in vivo and in vitro models of infection and immunologic and molecular biology techiniques to ask hypothesis-driven questions. This is all in an effort to identify potential therapeutic targets to help the immune system overcome these bacteria that have gained antimicrobial resistance. This effort is very important with increasing morbidity and mortality in the immunocompromised and critically ill.