ASCI / Emerging-Generation Awards, 2024
The Emerging Generation Awards (E-Gen Awards) recognize post-MD, pre-faculty appointment physician-scientists who are meaningfully engaged in immersive research.
About the awardee
Tej D. Azad MD, MS is a senior neurosurgery resident physician and postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital where he is using computational methods to develop novel diagnostics and therapeutics for disease processes that are as common as they are understudied — traumatic injuries to the brain and spine.
Tej graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis as a John B. Ervin scholar with a degree in Neuroscience. While pursuing his MD at Stanford University, Tej completed a Master’s degree in Biomedical Informatics as an NIH TL-1 predoctoral fellow. Tej used systems immunology methods to derive immunogenomic signatures of organ transplant rejection, publishing these findings as lead author in JCI-Insight. Tej extended his interest in computational biology by joining the lab of ASCI member Dr. Maximilian Diehn, supported by a fellowship from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Tej developed next generation sequencing-based liquid biopsies for esophageal cancer, pediatric sarcomas, and leptomeningeal disease, leading to multiple publications, including first author papers in Gastroenterology and JCO Precision Oncology.
As a neurosurgery resident, Tej joined the lab of ASCI member Dr. Chetan Bettegowda, where he is currently translating his lessons from computational biology and genomics to the study of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. To date, Tej has published more than 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts, is leading a prospective spinal cord injury biomarker study which has recruited more than 100 patients, and is the Principal Investigator on a Young Investigator Grant from the North American Spine Society.