Three ATS members will be honored for outstanding work and achievement during the ATS Plenary Session Tuesday.
Jack H. Hasson, MD
Jack H. Hasson, MD, will receive the 2017 ATS Outstanding Clinician Award. He is a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is a partner in the Princeton Pulmonary Group and a staff physician with the Baptist Medical Center.
Dr. Hasson is active in many committees and organizations, including the American Lung Association, the Birmingham Academy of Medicine, the Jefferson County Medical Society, the American College of Physicians, the Birmingham Society of Internists, and the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. He has been published in the Southern Medical Journal, the Alabama Journal of Medical Sciences, the American Journal of Roentgenology, and Chest.
Henry E. Fessler, MD
Henry E. Fessler, MD, will receive the 2017 ATS Outstanding Educator Award. He is a professor of medicine and public health, and assistant dean for undergraduate medical education at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He began his career at Johns Hopkins in 1985 as an intensivist and physiologist, studying classical physiology in patients and animal models. He has written more than 100 papers and book chapters.
Dr. Fessler’s path changed in 2005 when he was appointed fellowship program director in pulmonary and critical care. Since then, the fellowship increased its female fellows from 25 percent to 65 percent.
Avrum Spira, MD, MSc
Avrum Spira, MD, MSc, will receive the 2017 ATS Research Innovation and Translation Achievement Award. He is a professor of medicine, pathology, and bioinformatics, and the Alexander Graham Bell Professor in Health Care Entrepreneurship at Boston University. He is the chief of the Division of Computational Biomedicine and director of the Boston Medical Center Cancer Center. He is also an attending physician at Boston Medical Center.
Dr. Spira has built a translational research program at Boston University that focuses on genomic alterations associated with smoking-related lung disease. This led to a molecular test for the early detection of lung cancer that has successfully translated into the clinic. The program also has developed a novel therapeutic for COPD that is in preclinical development.