ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2024

Maria C. Basil, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and an attending physician in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care where she focuses on care of patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and works in the medical ICU. Dr. Basil received her medical and doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied cell fate regulation in T lymphocytes. She then completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital before returning to Penn for her fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care. Dr. Basil did her post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Edward E. Morrisey where she focused on understanding the cellular composition and function of the human respiratory airways, a region of the human lung that is a target of injury in many chronic lung diseases, including COPD, but an anatomical niche that is not present in mouse. In this region, she identified a novel human specific airway cell progenitor population and characterized how its progenitor function is disrupted in cigarette smoke injury and COPD. She now runs a laboratory focused on understanding progenitor relationships broadly in the distal human lung, with a specific focus on the development, injury response and regenerative capacity in the human respiratory airways. Her group focuses on using novel model systems and advanced transcriptomic and genomic approaches to interrogate human lung development and chronic lung disease.  She is actively involved in mentoring physician scientists and the development of programs to support women in medicine and science. Her work has been recognized and funded by the NIH, the Parker B. Francis Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.