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Eric Houpt, MD, the Jack Gwaltney Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases and International Health at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, has been honored with the 2015 Oswald Avery Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The award was announced on July 8th, 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 UVA Division of Infectious Diseases 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 the department’s annual Carey-Marshall-Thorner Research and Scholars Day, which provides an opportunity for fellows and residents to present their research.

Dr. Houpt’s research, supported by several grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes for Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC 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, and each requires special skill sets.” Currently Dr. Houpt’s group is actively working in eight countries in Africa, four in Asia, two in South America, as well as in Russia and Australia.

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.

(For more background on Dr. Houpt’s research, go to: http://newsroom.uvahealth.com/about/news-room/archives/eric-houpt-md-to-lead-3.9-million-study-on-the-next-generation-of-molecular-diagnostic-technologies.)