(Boston)—Joseph P. Mizgerd, ScD, the Jerome S. Brody, MD, Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and Director of the Pulmonary Center at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, will receive the annual American Thoracic Society’s (ATS) Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments on May 22.
The honor recognizes outstanding scientific research contributions in basic or clinical arenas to enhance the understanding, prevention and treatment of respiratory disease, critical illness, or sleep disorders, while acknowledging exemplary professionalism, collegiality and citizenship through mentorship and scientific involvement in the ATS community.
Mizgerd’s research focuses on lung immunology and respiratory infection with broad goals of elucidating pathways that determine pneumonia susceptibility and outcome. He began his career as a principal investigator with investigations of the transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of immune responses to lung infection, helping to delineate mechanisms of immune resistance and tissue resilience that together protect an infected lung. His more recent findings emphasize how recovery from respiratory infections changes the immune system localized within the lung, including resident memory lymphocytes and trained innate immunity.
Motivating and training lung scientists is important to Mizgerd. In addition to being an active research mentor, he has been a multiple principal investigator of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded T32 training program in lung biology, for MD and PhD postdoctoral and pre-doctoral researchers, since 2010. Mizgerd’s research is funded by the NHLBI and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 2017, he received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the NHLBI.
Mizgerd received his undergraduate degree in biology from Amherst College and then completed research training and served on the faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His doctoral studies of lung phagocytes were mentored by Joseph D. Brain, ScD, who was the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology at Harvard, and his postdoctoral fellowship studying neutrophil recruitment was mentored by Claire M. Doerschuk, MD, who is now a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Mizgerd joined BU as a professor in 2008.
Founded in 1905, ATS is the world's leading medical society dedicated to accelerating the advancement of global respiratory health through multidisciplinary collaboration, education, and advocacy.