ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2021
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 Sucre, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She graduated from Harvard Medical School, trained in pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, and completed fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at UCLA. Since joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 2016, she has established a research program focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of lung development and lung disease across the lifespan with a particular focus on bronchopulmonary dysplasia, the leading complication in survivors of preterm birth. Her clinical experience treating premature infants provides a unique perspective for studying lung development, and she has cultivated new ex vivo, in vitro, and in vivo models of lung injury. Dr. Sucre has combined these models with single-cell biology and spatial transcriptomics to gain paradigm-shifting insights into cellular specialization and dynamics in the developing lung, elucidated age-regulated host susceptibility factors to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and defined previously unrecognized cell types in chronic respiratory diseases.