ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2024
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
SeungHye Han, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Northwestern University where she serves as a physician-scientist specializing in pulmonary and critical care medicine. She has received several prestigious awards and grants for her research, including the Parker B. Francis Fellowship, the American Heart Association Career Development Award, the NHLBI K08 mentored award, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation COVID-19 Fund to Retain Clinician Scientists, and the American Lung Association Innovation Award. Clinically, she is an attending physician in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Dr. Han’s research program focuses on the mechanisms of how lung epithelial cells repair after injury and how dysregulated repair leads to fibrosis. Her laboratory is dedicated to identifying causal mechanisms that link mitochondrial and cellular metabolism to lung epithelial stem cell function and fate in the context of lung development and lung repair after injury. Her group is also investigating how lung epithelial stem cells interact with other cell types, such as immune cells and mesenchymal cells, during the repair process and the development of pulmonary fibrosis. Her work has demonstrated that mitochondrial function, specifically NAD+ regeneration independent of ATP synthesis, is essential for the proper differentiation of lung epithelial cells during postnatal development by preventing aberrantly high activation of the integrated stress response. Her findings identify a novel connection between mitochondria, NAD+ metabolism, the integrated stress response and cell differentiation, and suggest a potential therapeutic target to enhance lung epithelial repair upon injury and prevent pulmonary fibrosis.