Dr. Pratik Pandharipande MD, MSCI is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery, and the Chief of the Division of Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA. As one of the Principal Investigators in the ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group at Vanderbilt, his team’s research focuses on ICU-associated brain injury (manifested acutely as delirium and chronically as cognitive impairment and mental illness), and interventions aimed at reducing this burden on patients’ quality of life after critical illness. More recently, Dr. Pandharipande has been studying the role of sedative medications in brain injury and on altering sedation paradigms to improve patient outcomes. Dr. Pandharipande is NIH-funded and well published with over 80 peer reviewed manuscripts and has presented his research and educated health care providers in numerous national and international meetings.