ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2025

Cheryl L. Maier, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Medical Director for the Special Coagulation Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine. She completed the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Yale School of Medicine before coming to Emory for residency training in Clinical Pathology. At Emory Cheryl served as a chief resident and then stayed for fellowship training in Transfusion Medicine with a focus on Hemostasis. She joined Emory’s faculty in January 2020 and secured extramural funding from NIH/NHLBI as the recipient of a K99/R00 career development award studying platelet immunology. With the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Dr. Maier led a multidisciplinary care team that reported the novel observation of blood hyperviscosity in critically ill COVID-19 patients, and served as the Principle Investigator for a randomized controlled trial on the role of therapeutic plasma exchange as an intervention for COVID-associated coagulopathy. She spent the next 3 years investigating drivers of severe COVID-19 and uncovered a unique mechanism by which pathologically-elevated fibrinogen induces red blood cell aggregates that mechanically injure the vascular endothelium. Her laboratory continues to investigate mechanisms and mitigators of disease pathology at the interface of the immune and hemostatic systems, including thromboinflammation associated with acute viral infection, sepsis, stroke and malignancy. Cheryl previously served as a member of NIH/NHLBI’s Omics Scientific Task Force for the RECOVER Initiative, and is currently a member of the American Society of Hematology’s Scientific Committee on Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and a co-chair for the International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis’s Perioperative and Critical Care Thrombosis and Hemostasis Subcommittee. As an Associate Director of Emory’s MSTP and Co-Director of Emory’s Research Track Pathology Residency Program, Dr. Maier remains deeply committed to clinical investigation and supporting the next generation of physician scientists.