As a postdoctoral fellow at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, he carried out bone marrow transplantation studies in lethally-irradiated mice to determine the contribution of transplanted marrow cells to the cellular component of the injured lung. In more recent years as PI or co-Investigator on NIH-funded grants, he participated in projects by developing an in vitro co-culture system to study the interactions between lung cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) and bone marrow cells. Dr. Aliotta has recently applied these techniques to a monocrotaline model of pulmonary hypertension, focusing on the role of EVs isolated from monocrotaline-injured animals in the pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension.