Dr. Anna Nam, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and the Gellert Family/John P. Leonard, M.D. Research Scholar in Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has received a 2025 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award from The Hartwell Foundation. The award provides $100,000 direct cost support per year for three years and designation as a Hartwell investigator.
The award will support Dr. Nam’s research targeting inflammatory pathways that drive systemic lupus erythematosus—commonly referred to as lupus. An autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in the body, lupus affects approximately 1.5 million Americans, predominantly women. Symptoms can include joint pain and swelling, extreme fatigue, chest pain and skin rash. “When children get lupus, the disease is particularly severe with more frequent neurologic and kidney disorders,” said Dr. Nam. She plans to focus on pediatric patients with the aim of improving health outcomes for children with the disease.
Dr. Nam’s laboratory has focused on understanding blood cancers, especially cancers related to blood stem cells that reside in bone marrow, using high-dimensional data to extract detailed information about cell behavior.
