The inaugural J. Randall Curtis Humanism Award will be among the recognitions for exemplary contributions to respiratory health during the ATS 2023 International Conference. Daily award presentations will take place through Tuesday, May 23, and will amplify the influential work of this year’s honorees.

The Opening Ceremony was held on Saturday and included the presentation of the Jo Rae Wright Award for Outstanding Service, the Public Service Award, the World Lung Health Award, and the J. Randall Curtis Humanism Award.

On Sunday, May 21, the Awards Ceremony will feature the J. Burns Amberson Lecture, the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal, and the Distinguished Achievement Award at 4–5 p.m.

The four recipients of the Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments will be the featured speakers at the Awards Ceremony at 2:15–3:45 p.m. on Monday, May 22.

The Outstanding Educator Award, the Outstanding Clinician Award, and the Research Innovation and Translation Achievement Award will be given during the Plenary Session from 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. on Tuesday, May 23.

Recipients are selected with an emphasis on efforts that have the potential to eliminate health disparities.

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J. Randall Curtis Humanism Award

Erin K. Kross, MD
University of Washington, Seattle

Named for a past president of the ATS, the J. Randall Curtis Humanism Award celebrates individuals who are exemplars of humanism in health care by recognizing work that reflects the ideals of compassion, humanism, and mentorship espoused by Dr. Curtis. Honorees demonstrate professional and personal skills, and engage in professional and academic activities that reflect exceptional mentoring skills; compassionate delivery of patient care; competence in scientific endeavors; respect for patients, families, and colleagues; the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their daily work and life; effective, empathic communication and listening skills; and service to their community.

The inaugural recipient of the award is Erin K. Kross, MD, associate professor of medicine in the division of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the University of Washington and director of the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at UW Medicine. Dr. Kross’ clinical work is at Harborview Medical Center, the safety-net hospital affiliated with UW Medicine. There, she attends the medical and neurosciences ICUs and on inpatient pulmonary and palliative care consult services and sees patients in a general outpatient pulmonary clinic. She directs a research program focused on improving palliative care for patients with serious illness and their families, with funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA). She is the program director for a T32 from NHLBI focused on post-doctoral research training in palliative care and mentors many junior faculty, fellows, and trainees.

Dr. Kross has been a member of the ATS since 2007 and is active on multiple committees. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Wellesley College and her medical degree from the University of Iowa College of Medicine. She completed her training in internal medicine at the University of Iowa, followed by training in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington. She joined the faculty at the University of Washington after the completion of her fellowship.

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Jo Rae Wright Award for Outstanding Science

Lauren E. Ferrante, MD, MHS, ATSF
Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

The Jo Rae Wright Award for Outstanding Science is a tribute to the work of early career respiratory health professionals. Aimed at tomorrow’s leaders in science, the award recognizes the demonstrated potential for significant achievement and contributions among those who are beyond postdoctoral fellowship but not above the rank of assistant professor or the equivalent.

This year’s honoree is Lauren E. Ferrante, MD, MHS, ATSF, assistant professor of medicine in the section of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and director of the Operations Core at the Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. Her research program is centered at the interface of critical care medicine and geriatrics, with the overarching goal of understanding and improving the functional outcomes of critically ill older adults. Dr. Ferrante is currently funded by a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders in Aging Career Development Award and an upcoming R01, the LANTERN study — both from the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Ferrante co-chairs the Aging in Critical Care Interest Group of the ATS and the Medical and Surgical Specialties Section of the American Geriatrics Society. Clinically, she is an attending physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at Yale-New Haven Hospital and cares for patients with persistent symptoms after COVID-19 infection in the Yale Post-COVID Recovery Program.

Dr. Ferrante trained in internal medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City before moving to Yale for a postdoctoral fellowship. At Yale, she concurrently completed a clinical fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine, a research fellowship in geriatric clinical epidemiology, and a master’s of health science degree before joining the Yale faculty.

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Public Service Award

Christine Mary Garvey, MSN, MPA, FNP, MSN
University of California, San Francisco

The Public Service Award is presented in recognition of contributions to public and population health equity related to lung diseases, sleep health, or critical care. This year’s recipient, Christine Mary Garvey, MSN, MPA, FNP, MSN, is a nurse practitioner who leads the ATS Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) Reimbursement working group, which is charged with addressing access to PR, PR awareness, and payment inequities. The working group membership includes all major U.S. pulmonary societies and patient organizations. Their efforts include developing a comprehensive open-access U.S. PR database of over 1,700 PR programs and an annual multi-society social media campaign to foster awareness and amplify the rationale for PR as a priority given its significant effectiveness and cost savings in persons with lung disease. Members of the working group recently averted a dramatic reduction in Medicare payment for outpatient respiratory services needed by many patients receiving PR services.

Ms. Garvey’s contributions to clinical care and scholarly publication have focused on exercise prescription, hypoxemia, oxygen use, PR in interstitial lung disease, and virtual PR. Her contributions to research include virtual PR and ambulatory ventilation. She helped lead the development and implementation of the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR) national PR registry and the recent update of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Reimbursement Toolkit and co-authored the AACVPR PR outcome resource guide. She has authored numerous guidelines, manuscripts, and chapters. Her clinical background includes PR and sleep disorders — most recently at the University of California San Francisco. She received a master’s of science in nursing as a family nurse practitioner from Holy Name University and a master’s in public administration from the University of San Francisco. She has an honorary master’s from AACVPR.

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World Lung Health Award

Obianuju Beatrice Ozoh, MBBS, MSc, ATSF
University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria

The 2023 World Lung Health Award honors Obianuju Beatrice Ozoh, MBBS, MSc, ATSF, associate professor of medicine at the college of medicine of the University of Lagos and the head of the respiratory unit at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria. This award recognizes contributions to improving world lung health in the area of translational or implementation research, delivery of health care, continuing education or care of patients with lung disease, or related political advocacy with a special emphasis on efforts that have the potential to eliminate gender, racial, ethnic, or economic health disparities.

Dr. Ozoh’s research interests are in non-communicable respiratory diseases, including the health impacts of air pollution. Dr. Ozoh led the first national surveys on asthma prevalence and asthma management and the availability and affordability of asthma and COPD medicines in Nigeria. She has used task shifting to implement and scale a structured asthma educational program and is currently working with other researchers to develop a chronic respiratory disease observatory for Africa. This observatory aims to compile comprehensive and reliable data on the burden of asthma and COPD in Africa. Dr. Ozoh makes it her mission to mentor and build research capacities in her region with her involvement as co-director for the PATS MECOR program, and an executive member of the Pan African Thoracic Society and the Nigerian Thoracic Society. She tirelessly conducts community-based events in her country to improve the quality of health care services delivered to those with respiratory diseases.

She obtained her medical degree from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, completing a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in pulmonology from the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria. She had further clinical training at the Tygerberg Academic Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa; a clinical observership at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York; and her master’s in global health from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, United Kingdom.

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J. Burns Amberson Lecture

Zea Borok, MBChB, ATSF
University of California, San Diego

Named for James Burns Amberson, an international authority on chest disease and tuberculosis, this lecture recognizes major international lifetime contributions to clinical or basic research that have advanced the fundamental understanding of basic, translational, or clinical approaches to respiratory disease, critical illness, or sleep disorders.

This year’s honoree is Zea Borok, MBChB, ATSF, Helen M. Ranney Professor of Medicine and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Her lecture will focus on alveolar epithelial cell biology and unlocking plasticity in the context of lung injury repair and fibrosis. Her work has contributed to paradigm shifts in the field based on early demonstrations of plasticity of alveolar epithelial type II and type I cell phenotypic transitions and epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity, which served as the basis for the now accepted, but initially controversial, notion of a central role of the alveolar epithelium in pulmonary fibrosis.

Dr. Borok has had extensive involvement at the ATS, including leadership roles on the Program Committee, the Assembly on Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, and the International Conference Committee. She is a graduate of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and completed her internship and residency at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed postdoctoral training in critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and pulmonary medicine at Pulmonary Branch at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to joining UC San Diego, she was chief of the division of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine and inaugural director of the Hastings Center for Pulmonary Research at the University of Southern California.

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Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal

J. Randall Curtis, MD, MPH
University of Washington, Seattle

J. Randall Curtis, MD, MPH, is the posthumous recipient of the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal, which recognizes major contributions to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of lung disease, critical illness, or sleep disorders through leadership in research, education, or clinical care, and acknowledges exemplary professionalism, collegiality, and citizenship in the ATS community. The Trudeau Medal is the highest honor bestowed by the ATS and is given in honor of Edward Livingston Trudeau, a founder and the first president of the American Lung Association.

The late Dr. Curtis was ATS president from 2009-2010 and served as a pulmonary, critical care, and palliative care physician at Harborview Medical Center at the University of Washington. He held the A. Bruce Montgomery American Lung Association Endowed Chair in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and was the founding director of the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at UW Medicine.

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Distinguished Achievement Award

Sharron J. Crowder, PhD, RN, ATSF, and Jennifer L. Taylor-Cousar, MD, MSc, ATSF, are the recipients of the Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes outstanding contribution to the advancement of the ATS mission through a single major accomplishment or a cumulative impact on the field. Awardees have substantially contributed to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of lung disease, critical illness, or sleep disorders through leadership in research, education, or clinical care.

Sharron J. Crowder, PhD, RN, ATSF
Indiana University School of Nursing, Bloomington, Ind.

Sharron J. Crowder, PhD, RN, ATSF, is a clinical associate professor and special assistant to the dean for health policy initiatives at Indiana University School of Nursing (IUSON). She has developed innovative models for health policy education with a demonstrable impact on nursing students, faculty, and clinicians, including nurses of color. Her models catalyzed many nurses’ engagement in policy work on asthma disparities, the maternal health crisis, the opioid epidemic, mental health, veterans’ health, and other health care issues. Those models also include the influential IUSON Legislative Fellowship and Eagles Health Policy Mentoring Program. To build the capacity for more nurses and other health care professionals to impact health policy, Dr. Crowder launched an IUSON faculty program that supports the integration of health policy into teaching, research, and service.

Dr. Crowder has been an active member of the ATS since 2009 and currently serves as the co-chair of the health policy committee. Her leadership roles in the Nursing Assembly include current program committee chair and, previously, early career working group chair. She is a policy resource to her university’s government relations, schools replicating her models, and notable national nursing and interprofessional organizations. She is fostering faculty health policy initiatives through her leadership of the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellows Faculty Network and the Association of Black Nursing Faculty’s (ABNF) Leadership and Health Policy Mentoring Program. Her BSN is from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, MN from Emory University, and PhD from Indiana University.

Jennifer L. Taylor-Cousar, MD, MSc, ATSF
National Jewish Health, Denver

Jennifer L. Taylor-Cousar, MD, MSc, ATSF, is an internationally recognized clinician-investigator and a tenured professor of adult and pediatric pulmonary medicine at National Jewish Health, where she serves as the medical director of clinical research services, president of the medical executive committee, co-director of the adult CF program and director of the CF Therapeutics Development Network (TDN) center. Through her expertise in clinical research design and conduct, she played a pivotal role in the development and approval of the highly effective CFTR modulator therapies that are vastly improving the lives of 90 percent of the U.S. CF population. She continues to effectively partner with the CF TDN and industry collaborators to find a genetic cure for CF. Through her investigator-initiated research, she is co-leading the first multicenter, prospective study of pregnancy in women with CF, and is co-investigator on a CFF/NIH-funded multi-center study to understand the effects of parenthood on CF health.

Dr. Taylor-Cousar shares her clinical research knowledge on national decision-making committees, including the CF TDN’s Clinical Research Executive Committee, the Emily’s Entourage Scientific Advisory Board, and the ATS Scientific Grant Review Committee. She was recently invited to serve a term on the NIH/NHLBI Clinical Trials Review study section. She is the adult CF care center representative to the CFF Board of Trustees and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Dr. Taylor-Cousar received her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University and completed her doctorate in medicine, combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics, and combined fellowship in adult and pediatric pulmonary medicine at Duke University. She obtained her master’s of clinical science from the University of Colorado.

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Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments

The Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments honors up to four individuals each year for outstanding scientific research contributions in basic or clinical arenas to enhance the understanding, prevention, and treatment of respiratory disease, critical illness, or sleep disorders.

Ana L. Mora, MD
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Ana L. Mora, MD, is a professor at the division of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the Ohio State University and director for pulmonary research at the Davis Heart Lung Research Institute. She was born in Colombia and received her MD and immunology training at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. She did postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt University and moved in 2002 as an independent investigator to Emory University. In 2010, she joined the division of pulmonary at the University of Pittsburgh, where she was a member of the Vascular Medicine Institute and director of education at the Aging Institute. For more than two decades, Dr. Mora’s work has largely focused on the pathogenic mechanisms of lung fibrosis. Her early work at Emory University established a novel model of virus-induced lung fibrosis that helped define the critical role of subtypes of macrophages in fibrotic responses. In addition, Dr. Mora is one of the pioneers of the study of the molecular aspects of the aging lung and the pathogenesis of age-related lung diseases, such as IPF. Her work has shown novel aspects of the aging lung, including the susceptibility of lung epithelial cells to ER stress and the elucidation of the critical role of mitochondrial homeostasis in the vulnerability to lung injury and activation of fibrotic responses.

Xin Sun, PhD
University of California, San Diego

Xin Sun, PhD, is a professor of pediatrics and professor of cell and developmental biology at University of California, San Diego. A graduate of Fudan University in China, she obtained her doctoral degree at Yale University and completed postdoctoral training at UC San Francisco. Prior to joining UC San Diego, she was a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002-2016). Dr. Sun and her team are recognized for their original, rigorous, and paradigm-shifting studies in a wide spectrum of subjects, including lung development, stem cells, injury repair, lung-nervous system interactions, and mechanisms of pediatric and adult lung diseases.

Over the years, her work cemented the understanding of the role of a wide spectrum of factors in processes from lung initiation to maturation. The knowledge gained was instrumental in guiding the successful differentiation of iPSCs into lung cell types, as well as the understanding of how prematurity leads to bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Using CRISPR/Cas9 to model human disease variants in mice, she and her team delineated diverse mechanisms underlying multiple lung-associated congenital disorders. She led the in vivo demonstration that pulmonary neuroendocrine cells are critical sensors in the lung. Despite their rarity, they are essential for amplifying allergen-induced asthmatic responses and modulating the endothelium barrier and excess fluid in the lung. Since pulmonary neuroendocrine cells are a frequent target for nerve innervation in the lung, her team is pushing the boundary of lung biology into lung interoception, the discipline of how the lung sends signals to the nervous system and how the nervous system controls lung function.

Karen Elizabeth Ann Burns, MD, MSCR, FRCPC, MSc
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Karen Elizabeth Ann Burns, MD, MSCR, FRCPC, MSc, is a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. She practices critical care medicine at Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Her research program focuses on characterizing practice variation in liberating critically ill adults from invasive ventilation and evaluating mechanical ventilation support strategies. As a clinician scientist and clinical researcher, she utilizes various research methodologies (national and international surveys, large-scale observational studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and randomized trials) to address important questions within her research program of which most studies are conducted under the auspices of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG).

Dr. Burns graduated from medical school (University of Western Ontario) in London, Canada, where she pursued training in internal medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine. She completed a fellowship in lung transplantation (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.) and subsequently a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology (McMaster University, Canada). She holds a scientist appointment with the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute (Toronto, Canada) and is part-time faculty in the department of research methods, evidence, and impact at McMaster University.

Joseph P. Mizgerd, ScD, ATSF
Boston University, Boston      

Joseph P. Mizgerd, ScD, ATSF, is the Jerome S. Brody, MD, Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and director of the pulmonary center at the Boston University (BU) Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. His research program focuses on lung immunology and respiratory infection with broad goals of elucidating pathways that determine pneumonia susceptibility and outcome.

Dr. Mizgerd began his career as principal investigator with investigations of the transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of immune responses to lung infection, helping to delineate mechanisms of immune resistance (eliminating microbes) and tissue resilience (bolstering the organ) that together protect an infected lung. More recent findings emphasize how recovery from respiratory infections, which everyone experiences, changes the immune system localized within the lung, including resident memory lymphocytes and trained innate immunity. A newer and growing ambition is to define sub-phenotypes of pneumonia involving disparate pulmonary pathophysiologies resulting from distinct and potentially targetable host responses.

Dr. Mizgerd received his BA in biology from Amherst College and completed research training and served on the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health. His doctoral studies focused on lung phagocytes, and his postdoctoral fellowship studies were on neutrophil recruitment. A major mission of his is to be an active research mentor and motivate and train lung scientists. He has been MPI of an NHLBI-funded T32 training program in lung biology for MD and PhD postdoctoral and predoctoral researchers since 2010.

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Outstanding Educator Award

Carol L. Rosen, MD
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland

The Outstanding Educator Award recognizes lifetime achievements and excellence in clinical or research education and mentoring in the fields of pulmonary, critical care, or sleep medicine. This year’s honoree is Carol L. Rosen, MD, professor emerita at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine.

During Dr. Rosen’s career, she has been a member of the pediatric pulmonary faculties at Baylor College of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, and CWRU School of Medicine, working with numerous pediatric pulmonary and sleep medicine trainees. Her clinical and research interests include diagnostic testing strategies for sleep-disordered breathing in children and adults, best practices for the management of sleep apnea in children, sleep-disordered breathing in sickle cell anemia, pediatric insomnia, pediatric narcolepsy, sleepiness/fatigue in children and teens, sleep health in children, and the impact of pediatric sleep disorders on health outcomes.

She is board certified in pediatrics, pediatric pulmonology, and sleep medicine and serves on the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Board of Directors. She also consults on two NIH projects: the “wrap-up” of the PATS randomized control trial assessing health outcomes after adenotonsillectomy in snoring children and a new study looking at sleep disparities in adolescent fatigue and functioning. She attended medical school at the University of Illinois in Chicago and did pediatric residency training at Washington University (St. Louis Children’s Hospital) and Baylor College of Medicine (Texas Children’s Hospital) in Houston, pediatric pulmonary fellowship training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and additional mid-career research training at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.

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Outstanding Clinician Award

Kevin F. Gibson, MD
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh

The Outstanding Clinician Award recognizes a pulmonary, critical care, or sleep clinician who has made substantial contributions to the clinical care of patients with lung disease on a local or national level. Awardees spend 75 percent or more of their time providing direct patient care. Honorees also must be recognized by patients and families as a caring and dedicated health care provider and by peers as having made substantial contributions to the clinical care of patients with respiratory disease. This year’s recipient is Kevin F. Gibson, MD, professor of medicine, clinical, and translational science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and medical director of the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease.

Dr. Gibson completed his medical degree at Rutgers Medical School, medical residency at Emory University Affiliated Hospitals, and pulmonary and critical care fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the faculty in the school of medicine in 1987 with a joint appointment in cell biology and physiology. After almost a decade as a physician-scientist, his focus turned to more clinical research activities. In 2002, he co-founded the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease, which over the next decade grew to become one the largest centers for ILD in the U.S. Dr. Gibson has received numerous awards recognizing research and teaching accomplishments. He has received funding for research in IPF and sarcoidosis and has served on a number of NIH study sections for NHLBI and the Department of Defense. In addition, he has co-authored more than 100 manuscripts and served as principal investigator in more than 20 clinical trials in IPF and sarcoidosis. He’s currently focused on clinical and translational trials in IPF and sarcoidosis and advancing novel therapies for these diseases through participation in clinical trials.

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Research Innovation and Translation Achievement Award

Ramon Farre, PhD, ATSF
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

The Research Innovation and Translation Achievement Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the advancement of respiratory research focused on specific innovations to improve health by advancing practice, policy, and health care delivery. Awardees may represent academia, industry, nonprofits, or government. Individual accomplishments are recognized along with the recipient’s role as a leader pursuing science through collaborative approaches — both interdisciplinary and inter-institutional. This year’s honoree is Ramon Farre, PhD, ATSF, full professor of physiology at the biophysics and bioengineering unit of the faculty of medicine and health sciences of the University of Barcelona.

Dr. Farre’s research is aimed at deepening the understanding of the mechanical behavior of the respiratory system to improve the diagnosis and treatment of respiratory diseases. He uses a multiscale perspective and a translational approach in a multidisciplinary framework involving close cooperation with respiratory clinical research groups. At the organ level, he studies the mechanical properties of the respiratory tract and lung tissues and the alterations in mechanical function associated with respiratory diseases. At the cellular level, he analyzes how the biomechanics of the cellular microenvironment modulates the cell-matrix crosstalk in respiratory diseases. He has signed contracts with different companies to evaluate and improve devices to diagnose and treat respiratory diseases. Currently, he is most focused on the design and publication of open-source, low-cost medical devices for facilitating technology transfer to low- and middle-income regions.

Dr. Farre is currently the head of studies in biomedical engineering at the University of Barcelona. He has coordinated research at different national institutions and has been an officer in research groups of the European Respiratory Society and was a member of the committee of strategic planning of the Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology Assembly of the ATS. He was a member of the Strategic Committee of Education of EIT Health (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) and was the director of education of its Spanish outpost.