Ragon Institute Investigator, Douglas Kwon M.D. Ph.D., is one of ten physician scientists awarded the Career Award for Medical Scientists through the Burroughs Wellcome Fund this year.

The Burroughs Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists was established in 2006 to provide early career support for physician scientists who are pursuing biologically relevant questions. The award is a five-year, $700,000 award designed to provide research support that bridges the late postdoctoral years and early faculty years and to encourage awardees with a proven track record of excellence to take risks and push science in new directions.

Says Burroughs Wellcome President, Dr. John Burris "The Career Award for Medical Scientists hopes to encourage physician scientists to continue in research. They play an increasingly vital role in health research and care."

Dr. Kwon's project is entitled "New technologies for the study of HIV mucosal immunity and compartmentalization in the female genital tract". It focuses on the identification of HIV-specific immune responses in the female genital mucosa that may prevent women from acquiring HIV. It also employs the use of next generation sequencing technologies to characterize the viral populations in the genital mucosa relative to those in the systemic circulation in women who become HIV infected.

Dr. Douglas Kwon is a physician scientist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard with a clinical practice in the division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received his M.D. Ph.D. degrees from New York University and then underwent Internal Medicine training at the University of California, San Francisco and New York Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He then completed his clinical training in the combined Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital Infectious Disease fellowship program.

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