Michele C Balas joined The Ohio State University College of Nursing in June, 2013. Prior, she held an appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a former John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Predoctoral Scholar and Post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Balas’ research career focuses on developing and testing interventions aimed at improving the cognitive, functional, and quality of life outcomes of critically ill older adults. She has extensive experience forming, leading and working with interprofessional teams in both clinical practice and practice-based research and recently co-led a study supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative.

Dr E Wesley Ely, MD, MPH is a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Associate Director of Aging Research for the TN-Valley VA GRECC, with subspecialty training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and a particular passion for care of older critically ill patients. His research has focused on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill patients with sepsis and respiratory failure, with special emphasis on the problems facing older patients in the ICU (e.g., weaning from mechanical ventilation, delirium and cognitive impairment in the ICU, neuropsychological deficits post ICU care, and quality of death in the ICU). Dr Ely has over 300 peer reviewed articles. As the founder of the Vanderbilt ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group, he currently serves as the principal investigator for ongoing clinical trials in sedation and delirium and post-ICU cognitive impairment. Dr Ely designs and leads a team of investigators in conducting both large cohort studies and randomized controlled clinical trials seeking both better understanding and management of critically ill patients in the ICU. He has recently had other reflective writing publications in the Wall Street Journal and in medical journals including JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine. He has been awarded membership into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) medical honor society, the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Association of American Physicians (AAP).