Dr. Mohamed Elgazzar receives 2020 Distinguished Faculty Award for Research
JOHNSON CITY (Aug. 21, 2020) – The Distinguished Faculty Award in Research was presented to Dr. Mohamed Elgazzar, professor in the ETSU Quillen College of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine.
The award was presented at the annual Faculty Convocation, which was delivered in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A member of the ETSU faculty since 2010, Elgazzar has gained national recognition for his research focusing on the molecular immunobiology of sepsis and chronic inflammation.
“Dr. Elgazzar is a brilliant researcher,” said Dr. Zhi Q. Yao, professor in ETSU’s Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Hepatitis (HCV/HIV) Program at the James H. Quillen VA Medical Center. “He has the ability to recognize and respond to fundamental gaps in our understanding of clinical immunology and inflammatory diseases.”
In less than three years of his tenure at ETSU, Elgazzar received extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including one R15 grant and one R01 grant, totaling approximately $1.7 million. Recently, he has been awarded a prestigious NIH R35 grant totaling $1.85 million for his novel discovery of the role of long noncoding RNAs in the development of myeloid-derived suppressor cells in sepsis.
He is also serving as co-investigator with Yao and Dr. Jonathan Moorman, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at ETSU, on other NIH-sponsored projects. In addition, he has forged additional collaboration with Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Elgazzar has actively disseminated his novel research findings through publications and presentations, with 34 original research papers and five review articles published since 2010. His work has been published in multiple prestigious journals and he also served as a reviewer for multiple high-impact journals and as an editorial board member of the International Journal of Immunology and Immunotherapy and Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology.
“Promising scientists like Dr. Elgazzar are extremely important to ETSU and the College of Medicine’s research programs,” Yao said.
Elgazzar graduated from Tanta University in Egypt in 1991 with a master’s degree in immunology. He earned a Ph.D. degree in molecular immunology in 2002 from Kumamoto University in Japan. He completed postdoctoral training as a research fellow from 2003 to 2007 at University of Colorado and Wake Forest University.