Congratulations to Dr. Jillian Hurst for her recently funded NIH Mentored Career Development Award (KO1)! The 5-year KO1 grant titled, Clinical and host microbiome features in the development of acute otitis media, is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, 7/10/2023 – 6/30/2028).
Dr. Hurst is the Director of the Children’s Health & Discovery Initiative (CHDI), which she helped launch in 2017. Her overarching career goal is to integrate clinical and biological data to further our understanding of the role of the microbiome and related host factors in modifying susceptibility to common childhood infections. Trained in biochemistry and molecular biology, Dr. Hurst has worked in translational pediatric research for the past five years, building effective collaborations throughout Duke, as well as with family and diverse community partners. This career development award will allow her to receive training in omics and advanced statistical analyses using large datasets, permitting her to lead multidisciplinary teams that use large clinical and omics datasets to evaluate factors underlying common pediatric infections. The proposed research studies center on the role of the upper respiratory microbiome in the development and recurrence of acute otitis media (AOM; middle ear infection), the most common infectious disease of childhood. Mentors to Dr. Hurst will be provided by Dr. Christopher Woods, an infectious diseases physician and clinical epidemiologist; Dr. Matthew Kelly, a pediatric infectious diseases physician with expertise in the human microbiome and clinical omics analyses; and Dr. Benjamin Goldstein, a biostatistician with expertise in the use of electronic health records data for population health analyses.
Dr. Hurst is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and serves on the Integrating Special Populations Core of Duke’s Clinical Translational Science Award.