Faculty and Providers

The Division of Rheumatology comprises twenty-five full-time and part-time faculty and staff members who contribute to the clinical care, research and educational mission at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The division was previously led by John Atkinson, MD (1976-1992 and 2008-2017), Wayne Yokoyama, MD (1995-2007), and Deborah Lenschow, MD, PhD (Interim 2017-2018). Christine Pham, MD assumed the position of division chief on October 1, 2018.

The faculty is highly diverse with thirteen women and nine men, including two under-represented minorities. The division has an active outpatient clinical practice and a busy inpatient consult service.

The division has 6 full-time NIH-funded physician-scientists who work in a highly collaborative environment to enable innovative research to advance the knowledge and improve healthcare for patients suffering from various rheumatologic diseases. To facilitate these endeavors the division successfully competed for a Rheumatic Diseases Research Resource-based Center (RDRRC) NIH P30 award, which began September 1, 2018 under the co-direction of Drs. Pham and Lenschow. In addition to expanding translational research, several faculty members have established specialized clinics to meet the challenges posed by the emerging rheumatic diseases as well as complex autoimmune conditions such as lupus and vasculitis.

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Aisha Shaikh, MD

Aisha Shaikh, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine

Research Interests: Vasculitis and interstitial lung disease therapies

Clinical Interests: vasculitis and vasculopathies, interstitial lung diseases in connective tissue disorders, inflammatory muscle disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis

Medical School: Dow Medical Institute of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan (2001)

Residency: St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (2006)

Fellowship: Rheumatology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (2009)

Reema Syed, MD

Reema Syed, MD

Professor of Medicine

Research Interests: systemic lupus erythematosus adult and childhood onset, juvenile idiopathic arthritis

Clinical Interests: systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, vasculitis, fever syndromes, childhood onset lupus, scleroderma

Medical School: Dow Medical College, Karachi, Pakistan (1998)

Residency: Michigan State University – Hurley Medical Center, Flint, Michigan (2004)

Fellowship: Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri (2007)

Jessica Williams, MD, MPH

Jessica Williams, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Research Interests: Lupus, social determinants of health, environmental epidemiology
Medical School: Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA
Internal Medicine Residency: Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Rheumatology Fellowship: Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Xiaobo Wu, MD

Xiaobo Wu, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine

Research Interests: Complement and RVCL research

Wayne Yokoyama, MD

Wayne Yokoyama, MD

Sam J. Levin and Audrey Loew Levin Professor of Medicine

Research Interests: Natural killer cells, innate lymphoid cells, autoimmunity

Fang "Roseanne" Zhao, MD, PhD

Fang “Roseanne” Zhao, MD, PhD

Instructor in Medicine

Medical School: University of Chicago,  Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois

Graduate School: University of Cambridge and the National Institute of Health, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Residency: BJH/Washington University  School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri

Fellowship: Rheumatology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (2018-2021)