Faculty Highlight | Dr. Eric Houpt Receives Top Award From IDSA
Eric Houpt, MD
FACULTY HIGHLIGHT:
Dr. Eric Houpt Receives Top Award From Infectious Diseases Society of America
Eric Houpt, MD, the Jack Gwaltney Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, has been honored with the 2015 Oswald Avery Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The award was announced in early summer 2015, and will be presented to Dr. Houpt at the IDSA’s annual meeting in October.
“This is the single highest honor given to a mid-career investigator in infectious diseases,” says ID chief Bill Petri, MD. “Eric is an institutional resource, someone who makes everyone around him better through his ground-breaking research on enteric diseases and tuberculosis. He has mentored many of our very best junior faculty.”
In addition to Dr. Houpt’s clinical, educational and research activities, he serves as the Department of Medicine’s vice chair for research, and helps organize its annual Carey-Marshall-Thorner Research and Scholars Day, which provides an opportunity for fellows and residents to present their research.
Dr. Houpt with UVA Infectious Diseases faculty member Tania Thomas and research nurse Emanuel Sillo – Haydom, Tanzania.
Dr. Houpt’s work, funded by several grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and by additional support from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focuses on molecular diagnostic tools for infectious diseases. “My lab develops panels of PCR-based diagnostic tests to detect a full range of pathogens. We then deploy these tests to our collaborative field sites and provide training to the lab workers who administer them. The tests are used in the context of clinical research to better elucidate the infectious causes of diarrhea, fever, and other syndromes. Our research involves a combination of laboratory and field work, with each requiring special skill sets.” Currently Dr. Houpt’s group is conducting research on five continents: in Africa (eight countries), Asia (four countries), South America (two countries), Europe (Russia), and Australia.
Dr. Houpt with (l-r) Esto Mduma (PI for Haydom, Tanzania site); Jean Gratz (manager, Houpt lab, UVA); Thomas Walongo (lab technician at Haydom, Tanzania site)–World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
The Oswald Avery Award recognizes outstanding achievement in an area of infectious diseases by a member of IDSA who is 45 or younger. Oswald T. Avery (1877-1955) was an American physician and medical researcher who, with co-investigators, is credited with isolating and identifying DNA as the constituent material of genes and chromosomes. Previous Avery award winners include Robert Good, MD (founder of modern immunology) and Anthony Fauci, MD, a pioneer in HIV/AIDS research.
(See story in UVA Health System Connect, here.)