Dr. Demarest is a Thoracic and Lung transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt. She completed her general surgery residency at Columbia University, where her interest in lung transplantation and ECMO was developed. She took three years off of residency and moved to Pittsburgh to obtain a PhD in biomedical engineering and artificial lung development from Carnegie Mellon University. Subsequently, she returned to Columbia to finish residency, then proceeded with thoracic and lung transplant fellowship at the University of Michigan.
She is the Associate Program Director of Thoracic Surgery Residency, the medical student clerkship director, and the Cardiothoracic Surgery Representative to the Early Career & Trainee Committee for ISHLT. She is a member of both the Workforce on Technology and Innovation, as well as the Workforce for General Thoracic Surgery for the STS. She currently serves as the co-director of the Laboratory for Organ Regeneration, Recovery, and Replacement along with her mentor of over 13 years, Dr. Matthew Bacchetta. Their lab is focused on creating organ support systems that provide extended physiologic support for injured organs, bioengineering platforms for organ recovery and regeneration, and developing artificial cardiopulmonary assist systems. She is a busy transplanter – Vanderbilt did over 90 transplants this year between two transplant surgeons, and she is an avid user of EVLP.