2022 Prize Laureates

Dr. Silvester is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Director of Research for the Celiac Disease Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and co-Investigator on the Manitoba Celiac Disease Cohort Study. Dr. Silvester’s work bridges advocacy, translational research, and clinical research in both adults and pediatrics. In a short period of time, she has changed the face of celiac disease research with innovative and groundbreaking work, including being involved in clinical trials for alternative therapies to a gluten-free diet and leading a consortium of pediatric celiac centers across the United States to develop tools to improve follow-up care. Her early contributions to the Manitoba Celiac Disease Cohort Study lent valuable insights to the natural history of the condition, and her development of the GF-EAT questionnaire has given the celiac disease community a short, easy-to-administer way to assess adherence to the gluten-free diet. She led the DOGGIE-BAG study, which highlighted the impossibility of total gluten avoidance, and provided a template for how to study the gluten-free diet and how to measure gluten in food and in vivo. Dr. Silvester is co-Chair of the North American Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN) Celiac Disease Special Interest Group and serves on the AGA Institute Council Basic and Clinical Intestinal Disorders Section. 

Dr. Murray, an internationally recognized expert in celiac disease, is a Professor Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and a clinician investigator and consultant in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Department of Immunology. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern Denmark. Dr. Murray’s research programs have been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and several foundations and industry, and include the clinical epidemiology of celiac disease, the role of genetics in predicting disease, and the development of animal models for the disease and its associated dermatologic condition, dermatitis herpetiformis. His work spans the spectrum from bench to population studies both in the United States and Europe, and he led the first clinical trials of novel methods for treating celiac disease. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers, chapters, and books on celiac disease and esophageal reflux, including development of clinical guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of celiac disease, establishing the frequency of celiac disease in the U.S., and describing the prevalence of morbidity and mortality in patients with celiac disease. He is a founder and past president of the North American Society for the Study of Celiac Disease and past chair of the Intestinal Disease Section of the American Gastroenterological Association.