Emily Lydon, MD, an ARLG Early-Stage Investigator Seed Grant recipient, was honored with an Emerging Generation Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) for her career in research. This award highlights Dr. Lydon’s meaningful contributions to the field of infectious diseases as an early-career physician-scientist.

Dr. Lydon’s work focuses on using multi-omic profiling and advanced computational methods to better understand host-pathogen interactions and develop innovative diagnostic tests for lower respiratory tract infections, particularly in immunocompromised patients. As an ARLG mentee, Dr. Lydon led the Integrated Metagenomic PROfiling to adVancE LRTI diagnosis and stewardship in lung transplant (IMPROVE-LRTI) study. This research aims to differentiate true infection from microbial colonization in lung transplant recipients, create a host-microbial classifier for accurate LRTI diagnosis, and assess how antibiotic exposure affects antimicrobial resistance genes in these patients. If successful and implemented in clinical practice, this test would help to combat the antibacterial resistance crisis by decreasing the number of antibiotics unnecessarily prescribed to lung transplant recipients.

Dr. Lydon is currently a post-doctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is continuing her important work to improve precision diagnostics for infectious diseases, promote antimicrobial stewardship, and improve clinical outcomes for immunocompromised and transplant patients with infectious diseases.

Read the ASCI Emerging Generation Award article to learn more about Dr. Lydon’s research for which she earned this important recognition of her work to improve care for patients with infectious diseases.