Dr. Behrens is the Joseph Lee Hollander Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at The Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. He is Division Chief of Rheumatology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Using animal models, and more recently human studies, Dr. Behrens has devoted his career to understanding the fundamental mechanisms of Cytokine Storm Syndromes. Through the study the animal model he developed to study Macrophage Activation Syndrome, as well as animal models of Familial Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis, he has dissected the cellular and humoral mediators of those diseases with the aspiration to develop novel, targeted therapeutic approaches. His investigations in human immunology have revealed that many aspects of the pathophysiology of cytokine storm syndromes extend into inflammatory disease in other organs including the liver and the bowel. He has trained multiple PhD candidates as well as numerous physician-scientist fellows. His laboratory has been funded by the NIH, HHMI, Arthritis Foundation, and the Rheumatology Research Foundation.