Dr. Watkins is an Assistant Member of the Puget Sound Blood Center Research Division and an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Washington. He recently joined the Division after completing clinical and postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Washington.

Dr. Watkins performs clinically-oriented translational research, studying outcomes following critical illness and injury, examining specifically how blood product transfusions might contribute to adverse clinical outcomes. His research areas of interest include examining the clinical and biologic relationships between blood product transfusions and the development of lung injury, sepsis, and multiple organ failure. He is focusing on elements of blood product processing, storage, and even blood donor health factors in order to identify mechanisms to improve transfusion safety in critically ill and injured populations, groups that seem especially vulnerable to transfusion-associated complications.

Dr. Watkins currently holds a career development award from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, investigating the effect of blood product storage time on the development of trauma-associated lung injury. Through this project he is also working to determine whether cell-derived microparticles are a meaningful component of the RBC storage lesion, and is investigating their potential role as important biomarkers of adverse outcomes in transfused trauma patients.