ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2023
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
Jennifer Lillian Small-Saunders, MD, PhD is an Infectious Diseases physician-scientist who studies molecular mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum parasites. She received her MD and PhD degrees from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional MD/PhD program, where she studied mechanisms of acid resistance and cytochrome c maturation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis under the guidance of Dr. Sabine Ehrt. She then completed Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). Her postdoctoral studies were performed in the laboratory of Dr. David Fidock, where she investigated the landscape of mutations in the P. falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter, PfCRT, and how these mutations contribute to parasite resistance to chloroquine and piperaquine in Asia and Africa. Now, as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, she uses novel mass spectrometry and gene editing techniques to study the role of tRNA modification reprogramming and translational control in resistance to the first line antimalarial, artemisinin. The goal of her work is to uncover novel stress-response pathways in malaria parasites that can be targeted for new antimalarials. Her work has been supported by a Doris Duke Physician Scientist Fellowship, an NIH/NIAID K08 Career Development Award and a Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Scholar Award, the last of which is granted to early-career, tenure track physician-scientists at CUIMC. In addition to her laboratory research, she attends on both the Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases teaching services and mentors MD/PhD students, residents, and fellows.