Cara Agerstrand

Cara Agerstrand is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Medical ECMO Program at Columbia University Irving Medical Center / NewYork-Presbyterian, within the Center for Acute Respiratory Failure. She completed both her internal medicine residency and her Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship at Columbia (fellowship 2009–2012), where her fellow project examined airborne heavy metals and asthma. Her clinical and research work concentrates on ECMO and extracorporeal CO2 removal, with special interests in ECMO for severe ARDS, pulmonary hypertension, and pregnant and postpartum patients; she is a first author on early Columbia papers on blood conservation and peripartum ECMO and a co-author on the ELSO COVID-19 registry reports in The Lancet and the 2025 ELSO peripartum ECMO guideline. Nationally she is an elected member of the ELSO Steering Committee (Conference Chair 2021–2023), sits on ELSO's International Research Nucleus Committee and Education Task Force, and serves on the CHEST ECMO and Mechanical Circulatory Support Domain Task Force; she received the CHEST Distinguished Educator Award.