Dr. Mary Armanios is Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology and the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her research and clinical interests focus on understanding the role of telomeres in disease. She discovered that loss-of-function mutations in the telomerase gene, TERT, cause familial idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and in 2007, she identified mutant telomerase genes as the most common identifiable cause of inherited pulmonary fibrosis. Her work has uncovered syndromic complications of telomere abnormalities in patients with pulmonary fibrosis that inform treatment decisions. Recently, research from her laboratory has expanded the role of telomere dysfunction to the biology of common age-related conditions such as emphysema and diabetes. The current focus of her work is on understanding the molecular mechanisms of telomere-mediated disease.