The Benjamin Castleman Award is granted for an outstanding paper in the field of human pathology published in English. Selections made by the Benjamin Castleman Award Committee will be based on the merit of the submitted paper, not on the entire career of the author. Please do not include additional supporting papers. Any optional information or letters from sponsors should be focused on the paper, not on the author’s qualifications. The 2023 award will be based on papers published during the twelve months preceding the application deadline. The subject may represent any topic in pathology, but must be directly relevant to human disease. On papers with multiple authors, only one author is eligible, and only one paper per author may be submitted.
The awardee must be a pathologist or a pathology resident or fellow who has not yet reached their 40th birthday at the time the paper is published. Papers by pathology trainees are encouraged. The prize will consist of a check for $1,500 and a certificate. Funds for travel are not included and the awardee does not have to be present at the Annual Meeting.
Application must be submitted by: Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 2:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
Nicolas A. Giraldo, MD, PhD
2022 Benjamin Castleman Award
Nicolas Giraldo-Castillo completed his medical studies in Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia in 2011. Subsequently, he completed a Ph.D. in immunopathology and tumor immunology at the Sorbonne University, Paris, France, at Dr. Wolf H. Fridman’s lab. Subsequently, Nicolas completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University Paris V under the direction of Dr. Catherine Fridman. In 2017, he started his training in Anatomical and Clinical Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and obtained his board certification in 2021. Currently, Nicolas is a Molecular Genetic Pathology clinical fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
During his residency, Nicolas worked in Dr. Janis Taube’s laboratory in the development and validation of predictive biomarkers for response to immunotherapy across different cancer types using highly multiplexed imaging technologies and interdisciplinary spatial tissue analysis pipelines. Nicolas has published 30 peer-reviewed articles, including 11 as first/corresponding author, with over 3500 citations. His current work focuses on the implementation of novel technologies for tumor microenvironment characterization, including next-generation sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, mass spectrometry, and multiplex immunofluorescence. In particular, he is interested in deciphering the molecular mechanisms associated with immunomodulation and aggressive clinical behavior in kidney cancer, and the development of novel biomarkers and targeted therapies in this tumor type.
Nicolas has been the recipient of a Ph.D. scholarship from the Colombian and French national institutes of health (COLCIENCIAS and INSERM, respectively, 2011), and multiple awards including the Stowell Orbison Award (2019), the Fred and Janet Sanfilippo Research Award (2019), the Mario Luna Research Award (2019), the AAI Trainee Abstract Award (2020), the Johns Hopkins best abstract in Translational Research (2020), the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer Team Science Recognition Award (2020), and Johns Hopkins Quality Initiatives and Performance Improvement Research Award (2020).
Previous Award Recipients
2021 | Christian M. Schürch |
2020 | Jonathan C. Dudley |
2019 | Sanjay S. Patel |
2018 | Nicholas P. Reder |
2017 | Carlos A. Murga-Zamalloa |
2016 | Benjamin H. Durham |
2015 | Mark J. Kiel |
2014 | Valentina Nardi |
2013 | Abner Louissant |
2012 | Daniel Winer |
2011 | Anthony Gill/ Jiaqi Shi |
2010 | Adeboye Osunkoya |
2009 | Kirsten D. Mertz |
2008 | Laurence de Level |
2007 | Adebowale Joel Adeniran |
2006 | Arul M. Chinnaiyan |
2005 | Andrew P. Weng |
2004 | Anirban Maitra |
2003 | Jerome T. O’Connell |
2002 | David G. Huntsman |
2001 | Todd Kroll |
2000 | Daniel J. Brat |
1999 | Irina Lubensky |
1998 | Jeffrey K. Taubenberger |
1997 | Sarah S. Frankel |
1996 | Frederic G. Barr |
1995 | Marc Ladanyi |
1994 | Cheryl Willman |
1993 | Timothy McDonnell |
1992 | Giorgio Ingrahami |
1991 | Peter Humphrey |
1990 | Ivan Stamenkovic |
1989 | Stephen Peiper |
1988 | John Anastasi |
1987 | James Kurnick |
1986 | Lawrence Weiss |
1985 | Ann Thor |
1984 | George Murphy |
1983 | Renatao Iozzo |
1982 | William Beschorner |
1981 | Roger Warnke |