Awards & Recognition: July 2018

photo of Barbara Kahn
Barbara Kahn

Barbara Kahn, the HMS George Richards Minot Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was named to receive the 2019 Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Kahn, who is also vice chair for research strategy in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess, is one of few physician-scientists to receive this award, which recognizes women whose outstanding career achievements in biological science have contributed significantly to the understanding of a particular discipline through scientific achievements, training of students and postdoctoral fellows and contributions to the broader scientific community.

Kahn’s lab has made seminal contributions to understanding the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes and has mentored nearly 100 postdocs and students. She has been at the leading edge of research on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes and the link between obesity and diabetes. She made some of the earliest observations of the dysregulation of glucose transporter gene expression and cellular function in altered nutritional and metabolic states such as obesity and diabetes. The work of her lab has revealed paradigm-shifting insights into how different metabolically important tissues communicate and coordinate responses to metabolic challenges.


Richard Frank
Richard Frank

Richard Frank, the Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Care Policy received the 2018 AcademyHealth Distinguished Investigator Award, which recognizes investigators who have made significant and lasting contributions to the field of health services research through scholarship and teaching, advancement of science and methods, leadership, and the application of health services to improve health and health care.

Frank’s research is focused on the economics of mental health and substance abuse care, long term care financing policy, health care competition and implementation of health reform and disability policy.


Thomas McGuire

Thomas McGuire, professor of health economics at HMS, was awarded the American Society of Health Economists Victor Fuchs Lifetime Achievement Award.

McGuire’s research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health care disparities, and the economics of mental health policy and drug regulation and payment. He has also contributed to the theory of physician, hospital and health plan payment. His research on health care disparities includes developing approaches to defining and measuring disparities, and studying the theory and measurement of provider discrimination. For more than 35 years, McGuire has conducted academic and policy research on the economics of mental health. His research on drug regulation focuses on brand-generic competition.


Two HMS scientists were named to receive 2018 Fellowship Awards from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, which support the next generation of cancer immunotherapy and tumor immunology experts through dedicated funding of novel research.

The 2018 SITC Fellowship Award recipients from HMS are:

Recipient: David Liu, HMS clinical fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women’s and Dana-Farber
Award: SITC-Bristol-Myers Squibb Postdoctoral Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Fellowship
Project Title: "Dissecting Differential Response to Immunotherapy in Melanoma through Clinical Computational Oncology"
Award Amount: $200,000 (two years)

Recipient: Bryan D. Choi, HMS clinical fellow in neurosurgery at Mass General
Award: SITC-AstraZeneca Postdoctoral Cancer Immunotherapy in Combination Therapies Clinical Fellowship
Project Title: "Combination Immunotherapy with Chimeric Antigen Reception T cells and Bispecific T-cell Engagers for Glioblastoma"
Award Amount: $100,000 (one year)


Photo of Sekar Kathiresan
Sekar Kathiresan

Sekar Kathiresan, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, was named to receive the 2018 Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. He will receive the award at the organization's annual meeting in California in October.

Kathiresan, who is also director of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Mass General and director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has pursued a systematic approach to understand the genetics underlying risk of heart attack, to discover its root causes, inform new therapeutic approaches, and identify at-risk individuals. He has distinguished noncausal factors, such as HDL cholesterol, from causal factors, such as LDL cholesterol and triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, and has identified specific mutations in the APOC3 and ANGPTL3 genes associated with a lower heart attack risk. These observations are inspiring the development of medicines to mimic these protective mutations.

In the past year, he has uncovered two additional pathways underlying heart attack risk: (1) genes that regulate the movement of inflammatory cells into the artery wall; and (2) acquired mutations in blood stem cells that increase with aging and provoke inflammation. He has also developed a genetic test to predict risk of heart attack and shown that statin therapy and/or a healthier lifestyle can decrease that risk.


photo of Reza Dana
Reza Dana

Reza Dana, the HMS Claes H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology and director of Cornea and Refractive Surgery Service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, has been awarded a Research to Prevent Blindness Stein Innovation Award. He is one of just 11 researchers nationwide to have received the award, which was established in 2014 to provide flexible funding to scientists pursuing leading edge research on blinding diseases.

An internationally recognized expert in the fields of corneal and transplantation immunology, Dana will develop and test the efficacy of novel, biocompatible adhesives to prevent and/or mitigate vision loss caused by corneal injuries and immune-mediated corneal damage with this support. The research could revolutionize treatment for many patients with severe corneal injuries and corneal thinning as a result of infection and severe inflammation.


Andrew Warshaw, the HMS W. Gerald Austen Distinguished Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, was among five individuals named to receive 2018 Luminary Awards in GI Cancers for their committed to improving the lives of patients affected by gastrointestinal cancers who will be honored in November in Washington, D.C.


Hanni Stoklosa, Ramnik Xavier, Marcia Haigis
From left: Hanni Stoklosa, Ramnik Xavier, Marcia Haigis

Three HMS researchers were named by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) as early- to mid-career professionals to participate in its Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Program. They are selected to engage in a variety of meetings and activities throughout the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine over a three-year term.

Participants are invited share their activities and insights on cutting-edge developments in a wide range of fields through collaborative work and interdisciplinary discussions among the nation’s evolving leadership in health and medicine at the NAM Emerging Leaders Forum, to be held in Washington, D.C., in April 2019.

The three HMS participants are:

Marcia Haigis, associate professor of cell biology

In her research, Haigis aims to identify molecular mechanisms by which mitochondria respond to cellular stress and to elucidate how these cellular mechanisms contribute to aging and age-related diseases, such as cancer. The Haigis lab has made key contributions to understanding the metabolic reprogramming in cancer, including a role for prolyl hydroxylase 3 in the control of fat oxidation in leukemia and metabolic recycling of ammonia to generate amino acids important for tumor growth. Haigis is also a member of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at HMS and the Ludwig Center at Harvard.

Hanni Stoklosa, HMS instructor in emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Stoklosa is an internationally-recognized expert, advocate, researcher and speaker on the well-being of trafficking survivors in the U.S. and internationally through a public health lens, advising NAM, the U.S. government and international organizations on issues of human trafficking; she has testified as an expert witness multiple times before the U.S. Congress. Stoklosa has conducted research on trafficking and persons facing the most significant social, economic and health challenges in a diversity of settings across the world. She is the executive director of HEAL Trafficking, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s and has an appointment with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She is director of the Global Women’s Health Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Connors Center for Women’s Health.

Ramnik Xavier, the HMS Kurt Isselbacher Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital

As a clinical gastroenterologist and molecular biologist, Xavier studies the specific molecular mechanisms involved in innate and adaptive immunity as well as the genetic variants associated with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and autoimmunity. His laboratory uses genetic, structural, computational, and animal models, as well as clinical research to define the mechanisms controlling inflammation and immunity in vivo. The Xavier lab aims to discover small molecules that can correct pathways defective in Crohn’s and autoimmunity. Xavier is a core institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, chief of gastroenterology at Mass General, and director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics at MIT.


photo of Benjamin Gyori
Benjamin Gyori

Benjamin Gyori, research associate in therapeutic science, was one of 50 early career scientists selected as a DARPA Riser. He will present "Model-building machines monitor, understand and explain complex systems at scale" at DARPA in September.


photo of Eric Lander
Eric Lander

Eric Lander, professor of systems biology at HMS, has been named the 2018 recipient of the William Allan Award by the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG). He will receive the award, which recognizes a scientist for substantial and far-reaching scientific contributions to human genetics, and present the William Allan Award address during ASHG's 68th Annual Meeting in October.

Lander, who is also president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has been a major leader in the study of the human genome and in the Human Genome Project. He helped pioneer the use of genome-wide expression analysis to characterize tumors. This initial work led to the creation of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a comprehensive catalog of cancer genes that defines and details the molecular architecture of the most common human malignancies. He has also done groundbreaking work on human population history, genome evolution, regulatory elements, long non-coding RNAs, three-dimensional folding of the human genome and genome-wide functional screens to discover the genes essential for biological processes.