J. Michael (Mike) Wells, MD, MSPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), holds the Heersink School of Medicine Endowed Professorship in Airways Biology, and is the Medical Director for the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Lung Health Center and the UAB Alpha-1 Clinical Resource Center. He joined faculty at UAB in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine in 2012 after completing training in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, and Critical Care Medicine at UAB.

Dr. Wells is a physician-scientist with an expertise in translational and clinical research focusing on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD). His laboratory has been continuously funded by the NIH and the VA to study mechanisms of pulmonary vascular inflammation and extracellular matrix remodeling in COPD. He is the site PI for multiple prospective studies and clinical trials including SPIROMICS, SOURCE, the NHLBI Alpha-1 Biomarker Consortium, the American Lung Association Airways Clinical Research Centers (ALA-ACRC) Lung Health Cohort, and the CLEAN AIR 2 clinical trial. The UAB Heersink School of Medicine Lung Health Center, under Dr. Wells’ supervision, facilitates the conduct of 44 federally or foundation-funded studies plus 87 industry-sponsored studies among 23 active investigators.

Dr. Wells has published a number of seminal observations in high profile journals for work related to matrikines and their role in COPD pathogenesis, biomarker discovery, and CT indices of pulmonary vascular disease. He has received numerous honors during his career including the Pittman Scholarship and Dean’s Excellence Award in Research at UAB, the Sreedhar Nair Early Stage Investigator in COPD by the American Thoracic Society Clinical Problems Assembly, and Young Physician-Scientist by the American Society for Clinical Investigation.