Ankush Gosain, MD, PhD, FACS, FAAP, associate professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center UTHSC), was awarded the 2019-2020 Mid-Career Award from the Society of University Surgeons (SUS). Dr. Gosain is also the director of Pediatric Surgery Research in the Children's Foundation Research Institute at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.

The Mid-Career Award was created by the Society of University Surgeons to provide funding for principal investigators with a history of research on major independent grants or smaller pilot grants. The award provides Dr. Gosain and his lab with $40,000 for one year toward their current project, while requiring that a presentation of results be given at the 2021 Academic Surgical Congress in Houston.

Dr. Gosain's current project, "Neural Crest Cell and Extracellular Matrix Interactions in Hirschsprung Disease," is looking at how the enteric nervous system, or the "brain of the gut," fails to develop properly in children with Hirschsprung Disease. Hirschsprung Disease is a birth defect that sees the enteric nervous system fail to form correctly in children, thus resulting in missing nerve cells that are required to help the gut function.