Dr. Shook is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and the Department of Dermatology at the George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He earned his PhD from the University of Connecticut, where he studied the impact of aging and injury on tissue repair in the central nervous system. He then completed his post-doctoral fellowship training at Yale University, focusing on how skin fibroblasts and adipocytes communicate with macrophages following acute skin injury. Since joining GWU in 2019, Dr. Shook’s research has focused on how the initial immune response is regulated by stromal cells during normal “healthy” inflammation and under disease states associated with dysfunctional inflammation and impaired healing. His research has defined how fibroblasts and adipocytes communicate with infiltrating monocytes/macrophages to regulate efficient acute wound healing and how the manipulation of these pathways can rescue defects associated with delayed healing. His independent research has been funded by the National Institute of Health and the W. M. Keck Foundation.