Dr. Rao serves on the Board of Directors of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) and was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigators in 2025. He was awarded the Edmund L. DuBois, MD, Memorial Lectureship by the ACR in 2022 for excellence in lupus research and recently received the Lupus Insight Prize from the Lupus Research Alliance. He has received career development awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Doris Duke Foundation. In addition, he received the Award for Mentoring from the Biomedical and Biological Sciences graduate program at Harvard Medical School in 2022.
“I’m honored to receive this prestigious recognition from my colleagues in rheumatology,” says Dr. Rao. “It’s been immensely rewarding to work with many outstanding colleagues over the past 12 years to better understand the immune dysregulation that occurs in rheumatic diseases. I take this recognition as encouragement to continue the effort to translate an understanding of immune drivers of disease into immunologic metrics that can guide clinical decisions and improve treatment outcomes.”
Patrice Fusillo is a writer and editor based in Oakland, Calif.
