Washington, DC— September 13, 2007— One of the 2007 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) ICAAC Young Investigator Awards sponsored by ASM will be presented to Jason T. Blackard, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Digestive Diseases, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Dr. Blackard is being honored for his research excellence in microbiology and infectious disease.
Dr. Blackard is a highly qualified researcher, whose current research focuses primarily on the molecular biology of co-infections of HIV and hepatitis C. He has published over fourteen manuscripts since 2004, many as first author, yet is still an active figure in the lab and a dedicated educator in the classroom. He has developed several courses, his first while he was still a Teaching Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. His dedication to his research has won him numerous fellowships and awards, including an NIH grant award in 2006 for a study of extrahepatic replication of HCV in HIV-infected women. Blackard is also Director of his division’s GI Fellow Research Program, and he was an integral part of the University of Cincinnati’s NIH application for a Developmental Center for AIDS Research (dCFAR), for which he will assume the role of Associate Director in the Basic Science Core.
Dr. Blackard received two B.S. degrees in Biology and Spanish from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. He went on to complete his post doctoral fellowship in hepatitis C pathogenesis within the Gastrointestinal Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School.
The ICAAC Young Investigator Awards will be presented during ASM’s 47th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, September 17 – September 20, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. ASM is the world’s oldest and largest life science organization and has more than 43,000 members worldwide. ASM’s mission is to advance the microbiological sciences and promote the use of scientific knowledge for improved health and economic and environmental well-being.