Alpha A. Fowler, III, MD is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1975, then trained in Internal Medicine at VCU, and completed a PCCM fellowship at the University of Colorado in 1982. He was named chairman of the VCU PCCM Division in 1998 and led the Division for 17 years. Dr. Fowler has had a career-long focus on acute respiratory distress syndrome examining, the constituents of acute systemic inflammation that lead to lung injury. He was the principal investigator on the first multi-center trial employing high-dose intravenous Vitamin C as a treatment for sepsis-induced ARDS.