Dr. Demarest is a Thoracic surgeon at Vanderbilt. She is the Associate Surgical Director of Lung Transplantation, a program that performed 99 transplants in 2024. She completed her general surgery residency at Columbia University and has a PhD in biomedical engineering and artificial lung development from Carnegie Mellon University. She proceeded with thoracic and lung transplant fellowship at the University of Michigan.
She is the Associate Program Director of Thoracic Surgery Residency, the medical student clerkship director, and the Cardiothoracic Surgery Representative to the Early Career & Trainee Committee for ISHLT. She is a member of both the Workforce on Technology and Innovation, as well as the Workforce for General Thoracic Surgery for the STS. She currently serves as the co-director of the Laboratory for Organ Regeneration, Recovery, and Replacement along with her mentor of over 15 years, Dr. Matthew Bacchetta. Their lab is focused on creating organ support systems that provide extended physiologic support for injured organs, bioengineering platforms for organ recovery and regeneration, and developing artificial cardiopulmonary assist systems.