Newswise — The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) and the Sbarro Health Research Organization (SHRO) named Dr. Luana Colloca the recipient of the 2024 Giovan Giacomo Giordano-NIAF Lifetime Achievement Award for Ethics and Creativity in Medical Research. This distinguished recognition celebrates Dr. Colloca’s pioneering contributions to medicine and public health, particularly her groundbreaking work in understanding the behavioral, neural, and pharmacological mechanisms of pain modulation, including the placebo and nocebo effects.
The award was presented by NIAF Board Members Dr. Antonio Giordano, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and Director of SHRO and Professor at Temple University, and attorney Alan D’Ambrosio.
Colloca is the MPower Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Director of the Placebo Beyond Opinion Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing.
Colloca holds an M.D., a Master’s degree in Bioethics, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Her research, published in top-tier journals such as Biological Psychiatry, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, The Lancet Neurology, and The New England Journal of Medicine, has been cited over 19,500 times (H-index 64). She has also been featured in prominent media outlets, including National Geographic, The New Scientist, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.
Colloca’s accolades include the Dubner and Patrick Wall awards from the International Association for the Study of Pain and the 2024 Researcher of the Year award at UMB. Beyond her scientific achievements, she is an avid science communicator, engaging audiences through podcasts—including one with Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander—and a popular TEDx talk.
About the Sbarro Health Research Organization
The Sbarro Health Research Organization (SHRO) is non-profit charity committed to funding excellence in basic genetic research to cure and diagnose cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other chronic illnesses and to foster the training of young doctors in a spirit of professionalism and humanism. To learn more about the SHRO please visit www.shro.org.
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