Dr. Uc is a Pediatric Gastroenterologist with clinical and research focus in Cystic Fibrosis (CF)-related pancreatic disease, and acute and chronic pancreatitis in children. Her laboratory focuses on dissecting the mechanisms of pancreatic damage and inflammation in CF pigs and development of gene therapies to the pig pancreas. She described that the CF pigs had an increased immune and inflammatory response in their pancreas that could be responsible of ongoing injury. She coauthored publications with Dr. Michael Welsh's group describing the phenotype of CF pig model. She is collaborating with Drs. Engelhardt and Norris on better understanding the pathogenesis of CF-related diabetes (CFRD) using the CF pig and ferret models. She is also the chair and the founding member of INSPPIRE (International Study Group of Pediatric Pancreatitis: In search for a cure) with the task of studying the epidemiology, etiology, natural history and outcomes of pediatric pancreatitis, a disease without clear diagnostic parameters and treatment alternatives in children. In this context, she is developing a data registry, sample repository, and longitudinal studies on pediatric pancreatitis. University of Iowa is the coordinating center for this NIH-funded multicenter study with 14 other centers providing patients, data and biological samples. This constitutes the first initiative to create a multi-center approach to systematically characterize pancreatitis in children.