The American Heart Association is presenting its 2021 Distinguished Scientist in Stroke to Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Eng H. Lo.
The Association designates Distinguished Scientist awards in several categories to members who have significantly advanced the understanding of cardiovascular, stroke or brain health. The 2021 awardees will be honored at Scientific Sessions 2021, which will be fully virtual, Saturday, Nov. 13 through Monday, Nov. 15, 2021.
Dr. Lo was selected for this honor because of his research on finding ways to improve long-term outcomes for stroke patients with ischemic injury through translational research. Recently, he made a discovery about how circadian rhythm affects neuroprotectants during ischemia in mice, which has the potential to change animal models of cardiovascular disease. He leads a research team investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie cell death after stroke and trauma and assessing novel strategies for neuroprotection.
“Congratulations to Dr. Eng Lo! His exemplary work connects basic cellular research through translational research applications that can help to improve health outcomes for our patients,” said American Heart Association President Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones. “His most recent discovery about the connection between circadian rhythm and neuroprotectants has the potential to shape the future of stroke care.”
Dr. Lo is a professor of radiology and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and has been a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital since 1991. In 30 years at MGH, Dr. Lo’s lab has trained over 90 students and fellows, many of whom have gone on to establish their own labs worldwide.
Dr. Lo earned a B.S. in engineering at Yale, a Ph.D. in biophysics from University of California Berkeley and completed a neuroscience postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. He was the Basic Science editor for Stroke from 2003-2015. (Note: Stroke is published by the American Heart Association.)
Dr. Lo has been recognized throughout the scientific community for his valuable research on stroke and brain function, detailed in more than 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He was previously recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association with the 2013 Thomas Willis Award for Stroke Research. In 2009, he was selected as the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator by the National Institutes of Health. He was appointed as the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Scholar in 2012 and received the Xandra Breakefield Mentoring Award in 2019 from Massachusetts General Hospital.
His leadership roles include serving as president of the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism in 2017-2019, and he is currently the lead coordinator of the Consortium International pour la Recherche Circadienne sur l’AVC, a collaborative network dedicated to the investigation of circadian biology in cerebrovascular disease.