AAOS President Dr. Ned Amendola, left, presents the 2026 NEXT OREA Award to Dr. Kelsey Collins of UCSF during the 2025 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. Collins was recognized for her groundbreaking translational musculoskeletal research. (Photo courtesy of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.)
SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2026 — The UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery announced that Kelsey Collins, Ph.D. has been named the 2026 New Emerging eXperts in Translational Science (NEXT) Orthopaedic Research Excellence Award (OREA) recipient.
Read the full AAOS announcement: https://www.aaos.org/aaos-home/newsroom/press-releases/kelsey-h.-collins-phd-wins-next-award
The award was presented Wednesday at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in New Orleans. AAOS President Dr. Ned Amendola presented the honor to Collins during the ceremony.
The NEXT OREA Award recognizes early-career investigators making outstanding contributions to translational orthopaedic research. Collins was honored for her groundbreaking work advancing translational musculoskeletal science.
Collins leads the Laboratory for Musculoskeletal Crosstalk at UCSF, where her team studies how systemic signals influence musculoskeletal health, particularly in aging, obesity and chronic disease. Her laboratory uses CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering, stem cell models and multi-omic spatial analyses to identify molecular mechanisms that drive osteoarthritis, pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, with the goal of developing new regenerative medicine therapies.
“We are incredibly proud of Dr. Collins and the transformative work being conducted in her lab,” said Dr. C. Benjamin Ma, chair of the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. “This recognition reflects her scientific leadership and the impact her research is having on the future of orthopaedic care.”
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