Administrative Contact
[email protected]
Dr. Wendt is a Professor and Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Medicine and Faculty in Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep at the Minneapolis VAMC. She became Vice Chair of Research in June 2024 after almost 15 years as Section Chief of PACCS at the Minneapolis VAMC where she was committed to building an academic faculty. In those roles and as a translational physician scientist, Dr. Wendt has extensive experience in mentoring post-doctoral trainees and junior faculty. In recognition of her mentoring, Dr. Wendt has been awarded Teacher of the Year award from the UMN Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship four times, most recently in 2022, and Mentor of the Year for the University of Minnesota CTSI in 2016. She is also a Principal Investigator for research training provided to pre- and post-doctoral trainees through a NHLBI training grant.
Dr. Wendt received her MD from the University of Minnesota, where she also completed her training in Internal Medicine, Chief Residency, and Fellowship before joining the PACCS division as tenure-track faculty. Dr. Wendt has a long-standing career in clinical and translational research in COPD, specifically focusing on biomarkers and pathways of disease with continuous federal funding for over 30 years. Dr. Wendt has extensive involvement with the American Thoracic Society (ATS), including chairing multiple assembly committees, which is a resource for networking and involvement for trainees and junior faculty.
Dr. Wendt’s research has focused on both clinical and translational research in COPD and associated contributors, including tobacco, HIV, air pollution, and COPD as a causal pathway to lung cancer. Dr. Wendt has participated on five large NIH COPD trials, including the NIH COPD Clinical Research Network and COPDGene. A significant area of focus includes identifying biomarkers and pathways of disease, particularly in lung cancer and HIV associated COPD. She is also a PI for the Lung Precision Oncology Program that focuses on research in lung cancer and lung cancer screening. Dr. Wendt’s translational program combines multiple investigators with expertise in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, computational and systems biology. In particular, Dr. Wendt has been a leader in applying mass spectrometry techniques to measure proteins and metabolites in lung biological samples, including bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). This work has been highlighted in two ATS workshop documents on proteomics and the scientific applications of BALF.
Dr. Wendt’s interest in air pollution and chronic lung disease dates to her participation as a delegate for the University of Minnesota and Chinese Academy of Science to address the health effects of air pollution in China. This resulted in two publications on the effects of air pollution exposure on lung disease and biomarkers of lung disease. Following this, she became a Site PI for the VA Cooperative Study #595 Service and Health Among Deployed Veterans (SHADE) an epidemiology study to determine the effects of deployment-related air pollution exposure, including burn pits, on lung function and symptoms. This study uses sophisticated modeling to identify individual air pollution exposure to correlate to lung function and symptoms. To further characterize this population, Dr. Wendt is the PI of a Cooperative Merit Award to characterize biomarkers of airway injury and inflammation in a subset of SHADE participants with respiratory symptoms. These biomarkers, in combination with assessment of anatomical and structural changes on chest computed tomography and airway physiology in the same Veteran population, will allow detailed characterization of respiratory endotypes related to PM2.5 exposure. In collaboration with faculty in Environmental Sciences in the SPH, UMN, we have identified over 1.2 million Veterans with COPD to determine the association of air pollution and mortality in this vulnerable population.