American Society of Hematology 2012 Scholar Awards announced

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) announces the recipients of its 2012 Scholar Awards. The ASH Scholar Awards provide monetary support for fellows and junior faculty pursuing research careers to assist them during the critical period in which they must complete their training and achieve status as an independent investigator.

The awards, totaling $100,000 for fellows and $150,000 for junior faculty over a two- to three-year period, are made possible through grants from the corporate community, individual donors, foundations, and funds committed by the Society. The Society is proud to recognize this year's corporate supporters, which include Amgen, Celgene Corporation, Grifols USA, Novartis Oncology, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, and Seattle Genetics. The Society is especially grateful to Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company for its lead support this year in the amount of $600,000.

"The ASH Scholar Awards demonstrate the Society's strong commitment to supporting hematology research despite the challenging current economic climate and threatened funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health," said ASH President J. Evan Sadler, MD, PhD, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "We thank our partners for their support of this program and of the next generation of hematology researchers."

The 2012 Scholar Award recipients are:

Basic Research Fellows

Yanwen Jiang, PhD
Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University

Andrew Kim, PhD
University of California, San Francisco

Amelie Montel-Hagen, PhD
The Regents of the University of California

John Anto Pulikkan, PhD
University of Massachusetts Medical School

Borja Saez, PhD
President and Fellows of Harvard College

Pamela Wenzel, PhD
Children's Hospital Boston

Anne Zaiss, PhD
University of California, Los Angeles

Clinical/Translational Research Fellows

Sophia Adamia, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Fabiana Perna, MD
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Basic Research Junior Faculty

Rafael Bejar, MD, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital

Leandro Cerchietti, MD
Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University

Stella Chou, MD
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Peng Ji, MD, PhD
Northwestern University

Mondira Kundu, MD, PhD
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Shannon McKinney-Freeman, PhD
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Vu Ngo, PhD
Beckmam Research Institute, City of Hope

Shunbin Ning, PhD
University of Miami

Jing Wang, MD, PhD
University of Colorado, Denver

Clinical/Translational Research Junior Faculty

James Bradner, MD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Sarah Holstein, MD, PhD
University of Iowa

Jing Yang, PhD
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Jun Yang, PhD
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Joanne Levy, MD Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement

Anil K. Chauhan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, will receive the 2012 Joanne Levy, MD Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement. This award, made possible by the family of past ASH Scholar Award recipient and distinguished Society member Joanne Levy who passed away in 2004, is given to the current ASH Scholar with the highest scoring abstract at the ASH annual meeting.

Dr. Chauhan's award will provide funding for him to continue his laboratory research focusing on the role of adhesion molecules in thrombosis and inflammation. Dr. Chauhan's laboratory currently uses intravital microscopy to study the interaction of platelets and leukocytes with the endothelium followed by stimulation or injury. Most of his work involves genetically modified mice combined with disease models such as atherosclerosis and ischemic stroke. Dr. Chauhan's most recent research focuses on investigating the role of EDA-containing fibronectin in ischemic stroke.

Dr. Chauhan received his PhD from the International Centre for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering in Trieste, Italy, and he completed his postdoctoral training in the field of thrombosis and hemostasis at the Immune Disease Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston.