Dr Hana Serajeddini, a senior clinical fellow in Dr Nair’s laboratory, has received the Stuart J. Hirst Abstract Excellence Award for the top abstract relevant to airway biology and physiology presented to the Respiratory Structure and Function Assembly of the American Thoracic Society.

The late Dr Stuart Hirst, while working at King’s College London and Monash University Melbourne, had made phenomenal contributions to our understanding of airway smooth muscle biology in asthma. Hana, working under the supervision of Dr Sarah Svenningsen, identified characteristic patterns of ventilation heterogeneity visualized and quantified by hyperpolarized xenon MRI in patients with severe asthma, and related them to the cellular and inflammatory profiles in the airways.

She is funded by a Resident Research Career Development Award from Western University where she will be joining the faculty of the respiratory division next year. Dr Svenningsen’s Translational Pulmonary Imaging laboratory is funded by grants from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.