Gustavo Velásquez, MD, MPH, has received several awards and honors this year in recognition of his devotion to develop safe, tolerable, and effective treatment regimens for drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB. Of note are the Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). This award recognizes Dr. Velásquez 's role as principal investigator on the project, Safety and Tolerability of New and Repurposed Drugs for MDR-TB Treatment, which (1) examines the safety and tolerabilitiy of two medications, bedaquiline and delamanid , within conventional multi-drug-resistant tubercuolosis regimens; (2) estimates how two dose-reduction strategies of another antibiotic, linezolid, affect the safety and tolerability of MDR-TB treatment and the pharmacokinetics of linezolid; and (3) estimates the effect of plasma drug exposure on the safety and tolerability of combinations of new and repurposed drugs.

Additionally, Dr. Velásquez was recognized a the 50th Union World Conference on Lung Health where he received one of the two Union Young Investigator Prizes from the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD). This award was established in 2011 to acknowledge a researcher for work in lung health published in the last five years when they were 35 years old or younger. and the Maxwell Finland Award for Excellence in Research from the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society (MIDS) for his research on the optimization to tuberculosis treatment regimes.

Finally, Dr. Velásquez received the Maxwell Finland Award for Research Excellence award in November 2019. This honor is awarded annually by the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society for excellence in research.