Baylor professor to receive Watanabe Prize
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The IU School of Medicine this week named Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, the winner of the 2023 August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research. The prize is awarded to “a senior investigator who has made a significant contribution to the field of translational science.”
Zoghbi is also director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and an investigator with Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The IU School of Medicine says Zoghbi’s research focuses on patients with rare and mysterious disorders, such as Rett Syndrome, and has contributed to the understanding of other disorders, including deafness, pediatric brain tumors and sudden infant death syndrome.
Zoghbi will receive the award at the 2023 Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Annual Meeting next September, where she will serve as keynote speaker.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Zoghbi to our campus next fall,” Tatiana Foroud, executive associate dean for research affairs at IU School of Medicine, said in written remarks. “Our researchers from across the state of Indiana will be able to learn a great deal by hearing about her broad range of expertise across the translational spectrum.”
Zoghbi was nominated for the prize by Dr. Paul Klotman, president and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine.
“Dr. Zoghbi has a remarkable gift for studying rare diseases in children to change the way we think about major human diseases,” said Klotman. “Her best-known work is in the area of neurology: adult-onset neurodegenerative conditions and postnatal-onset neurodevelopmental disorders. Without a doubt, her work has pointed the way to new treatments for these devastating disorders.”
The prize is named in honor the late August M. Watanabe, a former leader at the IU School of Medicine and Eli Lilly and Co. (NYSE: LLY). He is also the former chairman of BioCrossroads, the state’s life sciences initiative.
BioCrossroads also has an award named after Watanabe, the August M. Watanabe Life Sciences Champion of the Year Award. This year’s award was presented in September to former BioCrossroads Executive Vice President of Strategy Nina Doherty.