Yash Choksi, MD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, is the recipient of the 2024 Research Investigator Early Career Faculty Award from the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation.
The award, which recognizes outstanding early career faculty who are committed to academic medicine, was presented Feb. 23 during the Southern Regional Meeting in New Orleans.
A 2012 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Choksi completed his residency training and gastroenterology fellowship through the Vanderbilt Physician-Scientist Training Program. He joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2018.
Choksi’s research interests include defining the role of eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, in esophageal cancers, and the role of oxidative stress in eosinophilic esophagitis, an allergic inflammation of the esophagus.
Also at the Southern Regional Meeting, Fabian Bock, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, won SSCI’s Research Scholar Award for his paper “Rac1 and the Actin Cytoskeleton in Renal Tubular Repair.”
Bock and his colleagues have identified Rac1, a molecular switch that regulates the actin cytoskeleton of epithelial cells in the collecting ducts of the kidneys, as a driver of post-obstructive kidney repair.
The Southern Regional Meeting was a joint meeting of SSCI, the Southern region of the Academic Pediatric Association, the Southern Society of General Internal Medicine, and the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center.