Hughan is a practicing pediatric endocrinologist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh with clinical and research interests in impaired glucose metabolism in the setting of obesity and in cystic fibrosis (CF). Her research career began with an intramural training award at the NIH in pediatric endocrinology. During that award, she enhanced her background through completion of a Master’s degree in Clinical Research. Further, during her pediatric endocrine fellowship, she followed my initial pediatric research interests and designed and completed data accrual assessing postprandial glycemia in free living conditions and cardiometabolic risk evaluation in high-risk obese youth and adolescent girls with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

As junior faculty, Hughan developed an FDA IND for oral sodium nitrate and nitrite and she completed her NIH K12/K23 funded projects using the IND drugs to assess PK/PD in healthy adults and safety and efficacy for the treatment of metabolic syndrome. In parallel, during her mentored Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) EnVision award, she expanded her CF Endocrine practice and began co-mentoring a University of Pittsburgh medical student on a retrospective analysis examining factors (including glycemia) determining successful treatment of inpatient pulmonary exacerbations in pediatric patients with CF over a 5-year period at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Next, she mentored CF EnVision mentee in the writing of a Springer Nature Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes textbook chapter.

Hughan recently published a first-author manuscript on ‘Female Reproductive Health in CF’ and was co-author on 2 other CF Endocrine manuscripts for a special Journal of Cystic Fibrosis edition covering CF endocrine topics. Lastly, Hughan designed a pilot clinical research study with a CF EnVision co-mentee and mentored a T32-funded pediatric endocrinology fellow to execute the pilot, which forms the basis and preliminary data for a CFF Clinical Research Award proposal under review. Hughan’s current and prior experiences as a physician-scientist in the fields of obesity, prediabetes and early cardiovascular disease and her major contributions to science, are relevant to the islet cell function and hepatic glucose handling goals and scholarly activities developed during her CFF-funded EnVision Cohort I award. Finally, her career and CF EnVision training and future objectives, prior NIH K23 training and multidisciplinary mentorship teams in pediatric and adult glucose homeostasis place Dr. Hughan in a unique position as an independent physician-scientist to mentor future pediatric and adult endocrine and reproductive health fellows and junior faculty locally and nationally.