Charitharth Vivek Lal, MD, FAAP

Dr. C. Vivek Lal, M.D. is a physician scientist entrepreneur based in Birmingham, AL. He is an Associate Professor of Neonatology in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL (UAB), and the Director of UAB’s Pulmonary Microbiome Lab.

He is Founder, CEO and CSO of ResBiotic, Inc., and its subsidiaries ResBiotic Nutrition, Inc. which makes consumer probiotics, and Alveolus Bio, Inc. which does pulmonary drug development. Dr. Lal also serves as the Chairman of the Board for Urgent Care for Children, a Southeast US based chain headquartered in AL, which is the second largest pediatric urgent care chain in the US.

After medical school and residency, Dr. Lal completed his clinical fellowship in Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine and research fellowship in Pulmonary and Vascular Biology at University of Texas at Southwestern, followed by an executive program in Drug and Device Development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Currently Dr. Lal serves as the Director of the Pulmonary Microbiome Lab at UAB and the Chair of the Scholarly Oversight Committee at UAB. Dr. Lal’s lab studies the basic mechanisms for the development of chronic lung diseases.

Dr. Lal has received multiple awards, including the AAP Young Investigator, the Perinatal Research Society Young Investigator, the Neonatal Cardiopulmonary Forum Young Investigator, Southern Society of Pediatric Research (SSPR) Young Investigator Award, SSPR Abbott Research Award in Nutrition, and the SSPR Young Faculty Award in 2019. He has served as a council member at SSPR since 2019. Dr. Lal received the Department of Pediatrics Research Achievement Award and the Department of Pediatrics Excellence in Teaching Award at UAB in 2016 and 2021.

Dr. Lal’s Pulmonary Microbiome Lab at UAB is funded by an NHLBI and AHA to evaluate the role of the neonatal airway microbiome in the development of BPD and adult lung diseases. His lab’s funding includes AHA SDG, NHLBI K08, R01, R21 and other funding. Dr. Lal has published over 100 peer reviewed research manuscripts, abstracts and invited talks and has several patents under his name as lead inventor. He is a reviewer for many national and international scientific journals and has been invited for several international and national invited talks.

Based on his research, Dr. Lal has founded UAB startups ResBiotic and Alveolus Bio for development of consumer products and FDA approved therapeutics, respectively, for Chronic Lung Diseases. Dr. Lal raised 4.5M private equity funding in 2020 to launch these ventures. He was recently appointed to the Board of Microbiome Therapeutics Innovation Group, the Washington DC based national advocacy group for FDA approved microbiome therapeutics. In addition, Dr. Lal is a member of the Society of Pediatric Research, American Thoracic Society and other national societies.

On the clinical front, Dr. Lal developed and directs the Golden Week Small Baby Program at UAB Regional NICU. The Golden Week Program brought national recognition via the 2017 Gage Award, a competitive selection by America’s Essential Hospitals for significant quality improvement initiatives.