Research News

The Cleveland Clinic Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Global Center for Pathogen & Human Health Research named Nasir Javaid, PhD, and BJ Massey, PhD, the inaugural recipients of the 2023 Global Center for Pathogen and Human Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. The opportunity provides early-stage researchers with a two-year fellowship, covering salary and additional benefits.

Dr. Massey, who is completing his postdoctoral training under the co-mentorship of Florian Rieder, MD, and J. Mark Brown, PhD, Director of Research of the Center for Microbiome and Human Health, is investigating how the gut microbiome directly contributes to inflammatory bowel disease and intestinal fibrosis, by “eating" dietary nutrients to produce small molecule metabolites. “I stayed at the Cleveland Clinic to further my training because there’s no better place to do my research,” he says.

Dr. Massey hopes to become a principal investigator and start his own lab one day to further his investigations into microbes and metabolism. He says this fellowship will help open the doors to earning awards that can help fund his own lab in the future.

Dr. Javaid and his mentor, Younho Choi, PhD, at the Florida Research and Innovation Center, study the lifecycle and pathogenesis of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus, a highly fatal tick-borne virus of increasing concern. Dr. Javaid also hopes to run his own research group as a principal investigator to combat future viral outbreaks. “I’m motivated to do research that can help prevent the next viral outbreak,” he says. “Receiving this award is great validation of the work already underway.”

Headquartered in Cleveland, the Global Center for Pathogen and Human Health Research spans Cleveland Clinic’s global footprint and is the centerpiece of the Cleveland Innovation District, a collaboration aimed at creating jobs, accelerating research and educating the workforce of the future.