Core Faculty
All section faculty participate in clinical, research, and teaching efforts with fellows. Our core program faculty dedicate additional time and effort to help ensure ongoing program excellence. These faculty members work most closely with fellows, and serve as conference sponsors, clinical competency committee members, fellow advisors, clinic preceptors, and more. You may click any faculty member’s profile to learn more about their areas of focus. Below we’ve highlighted a few faculty members’ activities and their involvement with our fellows.
Program Director
Matthew C. Miles, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine in Pulmonary and Critical Care and has been fellowship program director since 2016. A clinician-educator, he holds a Master’s in Education and Curriculum Development from the University of Cincinnati and co-directs the pulmonary block for preclinical medical students at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. Miles currently serves on the Education committee for the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) and is immediate past-chair of the CHEST Training and Transitions Committee. He is also the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the journal CHEST Pulmonary. Dr. Miles’s scholarly interests include implementation and effectiveness of educational curricula, clinical quality improvement through education and creating resources for education in pulmonary and critical care medicine. His clinical interests are in general pulmonary and critical care medicine, advanced diagnostic bronchoscopy and rare and interstitial lung disease. Dr. Miles is the 2021 recipient of the prestigious CHEST Early Career Clinician Educator award and has been recognized as a Distinguished CHEST Educator each year from 2018 through 2022. At Wake Forest, Dr. Miles received the first Edward F. Haponik Fellows’ teaching award and has been chosen several times as a Master Teacher by the Wake Forest Internal Medicine residents. He is currently chair of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine Brooks Scholarship in Academic Medicine selection committee.
Christina Bellinger, MD
Dr. Bellinger joined our faculty in 2012 and is currently the director of clinical bronchoscopy services. A board-certified interventional pulmonologist, she maintains a busy clinical practice in routine, advanced diagnostic, and interventional pulmonology. Her clinical and research interests include evaluation of bronchoscopic techniques, molecular diagnosis of lung cancer, and healthcare disparities in lung cancer screening.
Clark Files, MD, Section Chief
Dr. Files joined our faculty in 2011 and is currently the section head for pulmonary, critical care, allergy and immunologic diseases. He is the site principal investigator for the NIH-funded PETAL network in addition to other trials funded by both NIH and industry. His clinical and research interests include ARDS recovery, critical-illness related muscle dysfunction, and testing new therapeutic strategies for critically ill patients. As co-director of the Wake Forest Critical Illness, Injury, and Recovery Research Center he helps direct critical care research activities of the health system.
Jessica Palakshappa, MD
Dr. Palakshappa joined the faculty at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 2017. Her research focuses on the intersection of critical care, aging, and implementation science. She is funded by an NIH career development award and uses mixed-methods to study the care we deliver to older adults in the intensive care unit and pulmonary clinic. She works as an attending in the medical intensive care unit and serves as the Associate Director of the Medical ICU.
William Mariencheck, MD
Dr. Mariencheck joined Wake Forest back in 2019. He came to Wake Forest after 19 years of work in a large physician owned private practice, multi-specialty group out of a large hospital in western Tennessee.