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
Ellen Foxman, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. She earned her MD and PhD degrees from Stanford University, where her doctoral work with Prof. Eugene Butcher defined rules governing human neutrophil migration in complex chemotactic gradients. She completed residency training in Clinical Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and post-doctoral training with Prof. Akiko Iwasaki at Yale. Dr. Foxman’s post-doctoral studies demonstrated that cool ambient temperature permits growth of the common cold virus by diminishing innate antiviral responses of airway epithelial cells.
Dr. Foxman currently leads a research program on mechanisms of innate immune defense against respiratory viruses. Current projects focus on (1) identifying molecular mechanisms that control the earliest stages of antiviral defense, (2) understanding how environmental factors influence host-virus interactions and tip the balance between health and disease following virus exposure, and (3) using biomarkers of the body's response to infection to diagnose the cause of respiratory symptoms. Recent findings include the discovery that rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, can temporarily protect against more dangerous viruses by enhancing mucosal antiviral defenses.
Dr. Foxman’s recognitions include the 2018 Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award, and the Phase I NIH/BARDA Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge Prize, and the 2021 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award.