Jaime Hook

Dr. Jaime Hook is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine with a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She serves as a teaching and supervising Attending Physician for pulmonary fellows in the outpatient Pulmonary Clinic and inpatient Pulmonary Consultation Service at Mount Sinai Queens and The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dr. Hook obtained her medical degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and completed her internal medicine residency and pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center. She carried out her postdoctoral research training in clinical epidemiology (2010-2012) and basic science (2013-2019) at Columbia under the mentorship of Drs. David Lederer and Jahar Bhattacharya, respectively. She joined the faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine in June 2019 to establish her own basic science research program, the Lung Imaging Lab.

Dr. Hook's research focuses on the biology of severe lung infections and pathogen-induced acute lung injury. Her laboratory uses a unique live lung imaging-micropuncture approach to determine how inhaled bacteria and viruses damage lung alveoli, the gas exchange units of the lung, and how pathogen-damaged alveoli repair to restore lung health. Her work places particular emphasis on the role of juxtacrine and paracrine cell-cell communication among cells of the alveolar epithelium, between alveolar epithelium and adjacent microvascular endothelium, and between alveolar epithelium and the immune system. Her team's groundbreaking research has revealed how Staphylococcus aureus rapidly forms microaggregates in structural niches of lung alveoli to stabilize infection, initiate damage, and resist antibiotic therapy.

Dr. Hook has received the 2018 Jo Rae Wright Award 'in recognition of outstanding scientific achievement by a young investigator' from the American Thoracic Society. Her publication record demonstrates a strong focus on lung infection mechanisms, with recent work (2023-2025) emphasizing CFTR function in alveolar defense, alveolar barrier recovery after injury, and mechanisms of influenza-staphylococcal coinfection pathogenesis.

Dr. Hook actively mentors trainees in her laboratory, including fellow Sarah KL Moore, Master's students Stephanie Tang and Sayahi Suthakaran, research associate Deebly Chavez, and volunteer Keshon Suthakaran. Her laboratory is actively recruiting students and postdoctoral fellows committed to 2-5 years of full-time research training to continue investigating endogenous mechanisms of alveolar repair and responses to influenza that promote secondary bacterial infection.