Winter 2023’s Awards, Appointments & Announcements in Rheumatology

A staunch champion of women in the sciences, Dr. Iwasaki also believes now is the time to direct more research toward such diseases as lupus and chronic fatigue syndrome, which predominantly affect women. “This is an opportunity for us to get into that [research] with rigor,” she says.

Tuhina Neogi, MD, PhD, Honored by OARSI & Lund University

In April 2022, Tuhina Neogi, MD, PhD, the Alan S. Cohen Professor of Rheumatology and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Boston University, traveled to Berlin for the World Congress of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) to receive the organization’s 2022 Clinical Research Award. Dr. Neogi has devoted the majority of her research efforts over the past 15 years to osteoarthritis and gout, with more than 300 publications.

“To be recognized by an international society for my body of work being important is a high honor,” she says.

She first started attending the OARSI World Congress in 2006, and subsequently became involved with various committees and the OARSI Board, and currently serves as deputy editor for the society’s journal, Osteoarthritis & Cartilage. Her first study on pain in osteoarthritis (OA) was recognized by OARSI at its 2009 annual meeting as a leading clinical research paper of the year. An OARSI Young Investigator Award followed in 2011. The 2022 award places Dr. Neogi among a group of preeminent international osteoarthritis researchers, and one of the youngest researchers to have received it.

After the OARSI World Congress, Dr. Neogi went to Lund University, Sweden, to join an esteemed group of scientists and academics who were receiving honorary doctorates from the university. The honorary doctorate was given in recognition of Dr. Neogi’s 10-plus years of collaborations with researchers at the Lund University Faculty of Medicine, and of her significant contributions to, and support of, clinical research in rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. The centuries-old ceremony, dating from the 1600s, was full of pomp and circumstance and included Dr. Neogi wearing a special hat and ring, and cannons being fired as degrees were conferred.

Dr. Neogi chuckles as she recalls that at the Lund University festivities, with her mother as a guest, some attendees approached her mother, assuming because she was the older woman, the award was being bestowed on her, not on Dr. Neogi.

Dr. Neogi was humbled, she says, to find herself among so many other recipients—astrophysicists, economists, architectural thinkers—who were all deserving of such high recognition. Dr. Neogi is not only grateful for the honor, but also that she was able to share the special occasion with her mother; it was their last trip together before her mother passed away following an unexpected illness.