JoAnn Manson, the HMS Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has received the Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award from the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation.
The Alma Dea Morani Award recognizes women physicians or scientists who have furthered the practice and understanding of medicine and made significant contributions outside of medicine.
Manson was recognized for her work in preventive medicine and women’s health, as well as her efforts to promote public health.
Manson accepted the award at a virtual event co-hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine.
M. Charles Liberman, the HMS Harold F. Schuknecht Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, has been awarded the Scientific Grand Prize from La Fondation Pour l’Audition, one of the highest honors given in hearing science.
La Fondation Pour L’Audition recognized Liberman for his pioneering work on the organization and function of the main nerve pathways connecting the inner ear to the brain.
Liberman has led research into the pathological causes of hearing loss rooted in the inner ear. In 2009, Liberman co-discovered a phenomenon called cochlear synaptopathy, also referred to as “hidden hearing loss,” a landmark discovery that has since informed the global understanding of the causes of hearing loss.
“Dr. Liberman’s research upended the dogma of what was known about the cause of hearing loss in the inner ear, and that work has had a profound and lasting impact throughout the field of hearing science,” said Mark A. Varvares, the HMS John W. Merriam/William W. Montgomery Professor and head of the Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery at Mass Eye and Ear.
Liberman accepted the award in a ceremony in Paris on October 20, 2022.
Stuart Orkin, the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been named a 2022 Citation Laureate by Clarivate Plc.
The Citation Laureate program recognizes researchers whose work is deemed to be “of Nobel class,” as demonstrated by analysis conducted by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), part of Clarivate. Citation Laureates are identified and selected based on an analysis of publication and citation data identifying influential researchers in the research areas recognized by the Nobel Prizes: physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics.
Orkin was recognized for foundational research on the genetic basis of blood diseases and for advancing gene therapy for sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia.
Two HMS researchers were among the recipients of the 2022 Lowell Thomas Awards from the Explorers Club. The Lowell Thomas Award recognizes excellence in domains or fields of exploration.
The two HMS faculty members recognized were Chao-ting Wu, HMS professor of genetics, and George Church, the HMS Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics.
Wu and Church were recognized for their work in conservation genetics at a dinner in Boston on October 1, 2022.
Two HMS researchers were among four scientists to receive the 2022 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology by the Cancer Research Institute. The Coley Award is given to one or more scientists for seminal discoveries in the field of basic immunology and cancer immunology.
The two HMS faculty members who received the award are Judy Lieberman, HMS professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Hao Wu, the HMS Asa and Patricia Springer Professor of Structural Biology and professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Lieberman, Wu, and their co-honorees were recognized for their collective work that revealed the role of pore-forming gasdermins in pyroptosis and promotion of anti-tumor immunity, setting the stage for targeting gasdermins in cancer therapeutics.
Jerry Cavallerano, HMS associate professor of ophthalmology at Joslin Diabetes Center, has been named to receive the William Feinbloom Award from the American Academy of Optometry. The Feinbloom Award is presented to an individual who has made a distinguished and significant contribution to clinical excellence and the direct clinical advancement of visual and optometric service.
Cavallerano will receive the award at the American Academy of Optometry’s annual meeting in San Diego in October, 2022.
Six HMS early career investigators received NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards from the National Institutes of Health. Part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, the awards supports investigators who propose innovative research that, due to their inherent risk, may struggle in the traditional NIH peer-review process despite their transformative potential.
The New Innovator Award supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not yet received an NIH R01 or equivalent grant.
“The science advanced by these researchers is poised to blaze new paths of discovery in human health,” said Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., who is performing the duties of the Director of NIH. “This unique cohort of scientists will transform what is known in the biological and behavioral world. We are privileged to support this innovative science.”
The NIH Director's New Innovator Award Recipients from HMS are:
Rachel Buckley, HMS assistant professor of neurology at Mass General, whose field of expertise is in the investigation of sex differences in Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers in preclinical AD, focusing on what sex biological mechanisms might explain female vulnerability, and resilience, to AD pathology and subsequent cognitive decline.
Adam Granger, visiting scientist in the Department of Neurobiology at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, whose research seeks to determine how the many different cell-types in the brain interact with each other, and how those interactions can go awry in psychiatric diseases.
Benjamin Kleinstiver, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Mass General, whose lab seeks to optimize and apply new protein engineering methods to accelerate the development of improved CRISPR technologies, to develop new capabilities for editing genomes, together with the hope of transforming these tools into safe and effective genetic therapies.
Carlos Ponce, assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, whose research aims to discover and characterize the visual representations of the primate brain, using machine intelligence approaches.
Silvia Rouskin, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, whose lab uses experimental and computational approaches to measuring RNA structures in cells that have revealed genome-wide RNA structure heterogeneity of HIV-1 and the genomic structure of SARS-CoV2 in infected cells.
Debattama Sen, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Mass General, who is investigating the regulation of T cell dysfunction and exploring epigenetic approaches for T cell engineering in an effort to develop novel therapeutic strategies.
The NIH issued 14 Early Independence awards for 2022. Funding for the awards comes from the NIH Common Fund, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Cancer Institute.
Jian Shu, HMS assistant professor of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, has received a HEAL Award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Funded by the NIH, the Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative is a trans-agency effort focused on improving prevention and treatment for opioid misuse and addiction and enhancing pain management.
The NCATS Heal Awards provide support to investigators working on opioid and pain research, focusing on efforts to develop innovative approaches to solving the opioid crisis and tissue chips to model nociception, addiction, and overdose.
Shu was recognized for his project “Scale up single-cell technologies to map pain-associated genes and cells across the lifespan.”
Four HMS faculty have been named to receive awards from the American College of Physicians (ACP).
The HMS faculty members being recognized are:
Sharon Inouye, HMS professor of medicine at Hebrew SeniorLife, who will receive the John Phillips Memorial Award for Outstanding Work in Clinical Medicine.
Martin Samuels, the HMS Miriam Sydney Joseph Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who will receive the Jane F. Desforges Distinguished Teacher Award.
Leigh Simmons, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, who will receive the Herbert S. Waxman Award for Outstanding Medical Student Educator.
Joia Mukherjee, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who will receive the Steven E. Weinberger Award for Physician Executives/Leaders.
The awards will be presented at the annual ACP meeting in May 2023.
