Pulmonary & Critical Care Fellowship Program
MGH-BIDMC Harvard

George A. Alba, MD

George A. Alba, MD, MSc

Co-Director, Program for Advancing Critical Care Translational Science (PACCTS)

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Areas of Expertise: Investigation, Academic Clinical Medicine

Academic Interests
Dr. Alba’s clinical interests include general pulmonary and critical care, pulmonary vascular disease, dyspnea and exercise intolerance, and long-term pulmonary vascular recovery following critical illness. Dr. Alba’s research focuses on mechanisms of pulmonary vascular thrombosis and chronic thromboembolism, pulmonary vascular dysfunction in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and pulmonary vascular recovery following ARDS. Dr. Alba co-directs the MGH Program for Advancing Critical Care Translational Science (PACCTS), a comprehensive biorepository for critical illness syndromes, and he is Associate Director of the Coronavirus Recovery (CORE) clinic where he helps to care for and study the pulmonary complications of COVID-19 and ARDS. He is a sub-investigator for the Boston COVID-19 Recovery Cohort, part of the multi-center NIH RECOVER study, and is collaborating on several projects to evaluate post-infectious endothelial dysfunction and small airways disease. As an educator, Dr. Alba enjoys teaching and training medical students, residents, and fellows in the Medical Intensive Care Unit and teaching pulmonary physiology at Harvard Medical School.

Awards and Recognition

  • Dr. Alba completed the Harvard Catalyst Clinical and Translational Research Academy and a Master of Science in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

  • His research on mechanisms of pulmonary vascular dysfunction has been supported by a National Research Service Award and R21 from the NIH NHLBI, Harvard Catalyst KL2, the MGH Center for Diversity and Inclusion Physician Scientist Development Award, the MGH Department of Medicine Sanchez and Ferguson Research Faculty Award, the NIH Loan Repayment Program, and the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, a career development award intended to increase the diversity of academic medicine, jointly supported by the American Thoracic Society, CHEST Foundation, and the American Lung Association.

  • Recipient of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) Young Physician-Scientist Award in 2023, CHEST Journal Top Reviewer in 2025, and MGH Department of Medicine MICU Teaching Award in 2025.

  • Member of the American Thoracic Society Pulmonary Circulation Programming Committee and the American Heart Association 3CPR Scientific and Clinical Education Lifelong Learning Committee.

  • Recipient of the MGB Pillars of Excellence team award for organizational leadership and outstanding performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

     

A full list of Dr. Alba’s published work can be found on My Bibliography.

More information can be found on Dr. Alba's Harvard Catalyst Profile.

 

+Current Projects

  • Developing a novel therapeutic to inhibit NEDD9-mediated platelet-endothelial adhesion in the pulmonary circulation
  • Pulmonary vascular dysfunction and recovery in ARDS
  • Pulmonary complications of COVID-19, including small airways disease, pulmonary vascular dysfunction, and endothelial dysfunction
  • Leveraging the world's largest genetically characterized KDR-PAH kindred to define how loss of VEGF receptor signaling impairs endothelial survival and identify repurposable drugs that restore this pathway in pulmonary arterial hypertension