ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2020
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
Heather Pua, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Pua received her MD/PhD from Duke University, where she defined a role for autophagy in promoting survival and mitochondrial clearance in T cells in the laboratory of Dr. You-Wen He. She completed her residency and fellowship in Pathology as well as her postdoctoral training at UCSF, where she worked with Dr. Mark Ansel to leverage miRNAs as discovery tools in allergic lung inflammation. Dr. Pua’s laboratory studies small non-coding RNAs as cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic regulators of pathologic tissue inflammation, especially through their emerging roles as extracellular communicators. Dr. Pua is also a practicing molecular genetic pathologist.