Get to Know AID's 2026 Early Innovator Award Winners
AID believes that innovation starts with people. We exist to bring together the individuals and organizations tackling the most important challenges in skin health and to help turn bold ideas into real-world solutions that reach patients.
The AID Early Innovator Award reflects that commitment. Created to support dermatology residents, fellows, and early-career clinicians and researchers, the award is designed to empower those who are already thinking differently about how dermatologic care can evolve. It’s not just recognition, it’s an invitation into a growing ecosystem where science, clinical insight, entrepreneurship, and industry intersect to drive meaningful progress at scale.
Each year, Early Innovator Award recipients receive the opportunity to attend the Dermatology Innovation Forum (DIF), connect with leaders shaping the future of dermatology, and engage with peers who share a passion for building what’s next. This award highlights AID’s mission to grow a collaborative community where innovation is supported early, nurtured intentionally, and translated thoughtfully into patient impact.
We are thrilled to announce this year’s Early Innovator Award recipients and look forward to welcoming them to the 2026 Dermatology Innovation Forum in Denver. Their curiosity, drive, and commitment to innovation represent exactly the kind of energy we believe will shape the future of skin health, and we’re excited to support them as they take their next steps forward.
Meet our Awardees:
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Hossein Akbarialiabad, MD, MSc, HMBA, is a physician-scientist and innovation-focused dermatologist working at the intersection of clinical dermatology, artificial intelligence, and advanced biomedical technologies. His work centers on the application of space-derived technologies in dermatology, including closed-loop clinical systems, AI-enabled imaging, and digital twins.
Dr. Akbarialiabad has received multiple national and international recognitions for innovation and is an author of peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals, including Nature, The Lancet, and NEJM AI. His research emphasizes the development of scalable, ethical, and patient-centered technologies designed to enhance dermatologic care across diverse settings, with particular focus on precision medicine and underserved populations. He is committed to bridging academia, industry, and clinical practice to translate cutting-edge innovation into real-world impact.
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Dr. Lewis is an Instructor of Dermatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his MD from Harvard Medical School and performed research at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in Dr. Rox Anderson’s lab. While a medical student, he developed VeinSeek, the first smartphone-based veinfinder, now with over a million users worldwide. He subsequently completed residency in internal medicine at UCLA and dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. As part of his training, he performed research in India and worked clinically in Malawi and Guatemala, and he has a particular interest in developing tools and techniques for global health and low-resource settings. Clinically, he sees patients in a general dermatology clinic, where he precepts medical students and residents. His research focuses on image processing, devices, and optical diagnostic tools for dermatology; current areas of inquiry are in image processing for visualization of subclinical erythema and otherwise-invisible topicals, cryotherapy applications for pigmentation and field cancerization, and optical methods and devices for skin cancer detection. His work is supported by the Skin of Color Society.
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Dr. Vasavda is a physician-scientist and dermatology resident at Harvard University. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemical biology at Duke University, followed by his MD and PhD at Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins, he was trained under Dr. Solomon Snyder to study the neurochemistry of itch and pain. He has discovered novel ligand-receptor interactions that mediate recalcitrant itch in patients with chronic kidney and liver disease and small-molecule therapeutics for trigeminal neuralgia. Dr. Vasavda has since completed his internal medicine internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital prior to beginning dermatology residency. His research interests span neuroimmunology, chemical biology, and translational therapeutic discovery. In parallel with his academic work, he serves in several leadership, editorial, and advisory roles, including with the Massachusetts Medical Society and the American Academy of Dermatology. His career goal is to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of neuroimmunology to develop equitable, mechanism-driven therapies to relieve the itch, pain, and discomfort that so often accompany disease.
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Dr. Ji Xu is a 2nd year Dermatology Resident at the Harvard Combined Residency Program. He obtained his bachelor’s and medical degree from the University of Oxford, where he graduated with First Class Honors and was awarded the Renwick Vickers Prize in Dermatology. He then completed physician-scientist training at Oxford University Hospitals and the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral fellowship in bioinformatics at the University of California, Davis, where he was funded by the National Psoriasis Foundation and received the Dean’s Award for Team Excellence. During residency, he is pursuing an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in the development of foundation models for pancancer diagnosis, prognostication, and biomarker discovery. In 2025, he was appointed to the American Academy of Dermatology Data Governance Task Force. His career interests include AI in healthcare, cutaneous oncology, and complex medical dermatology.
Learn more about the Dermatology Forum and register :
https://advancing-derm.org/platform/conferences/dermatology-innovation-forum-2026/
