UC Davis Health School of Medicine
Dean's Excellence Awards
Recognizing School of Medicine faculty and interdisciplinary teams who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in a particular area.
Awards and Criteria
The Dean's Award for Excellence recognizes outstanding faculty contributions in the core mission areas of research, education, clinical care and community engagement.
The purpose of the award is to reward the outstanding performance of a faculty member (Academic Federation or Academic Senate) and to acknowledge their contribution as a transformative leader in our collegial community. The nominee’s efforts must clearly contribute to UC Davis Health being a destination of choice to all those we serve.
The award categories are:
- Education – provides outstanding learning opportunities for students
- Research – leader in innovative research, making high-impact discoveries
- Clinical Care – provides high-quality patient-oriented services
- Community Engagement – enhances the qualify of life of our local and regional communities (Community organizations are also welcome to submit nominations for faculty who have demonstrated transformative leadership qualities in the community.)
The Dean's Award for Inclusive Excellence recognizes outstanding faculty contributions in the areas of research, education, clinical care and community engagement.
The purpose of the award is to reward the outstanding performance of an Academic Federation or Academic Senate faculty member and to acknowledge their contribution as fostering inclusive excellence in our collegial community.
The award categories are:
- Education – provides outstanding learning opportunities by utilizing innovative teaching methods that integrate inclusive and health equity principles into their curriculum development and teaching
- Research – makes high-impact discoveries that focus on reducing/eliminating health inequities
- Clinical Care – provides high-quality, patient-oriented, culturally-responsive care services
- Community Engagement – enhances the quality of life of our local and regional communities by demonstrating a drive to reduce/eliminate health inequities (Community organizations are also welcome to submit nominations for faculty who have demonstrated transformative leadership qualities in the community.)
A mentor plays a critical role in the successful development of others to realize their full academic potential. However, often an individual’s effort to provide mentorship is not reflected or adequately recognized in the mentor’s professional record.
The goal of this award is to recognize and reward School of Medicine faculty (Academic Federation and Academic Senate) who excel in mentoring and thus contribute to the success of our faculty and UC Davis Health. We wish to focus recognition of this activity on those mentors that have specifically helped early career faculty to succeed.
Faculty at the level of Associate Professor and Full Professor are eligible to be nominated for this award. The mentoring awards recognize excellence in teaching, clinical care or research mentoring.
We encourage multiple nominations to be submitted for individual nominees, including from mentees, if possible. Nominations that include multiple perspectives are encouraged and helpful to the review committee in reviewing nominations.
The purpose of the Dean's Team Award for Excellence is to acknowledge outstanding, high-performing, multidisciplinary team efforts and approaches that contribute to advancing our mission. The multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary team model should embody and exemplify a sustainable collaborative approach that aligns our collegial community with our mission of providing excellent patient care, conducting groundbreaking research, fostering innovative, interprofessional education, and creating dynamic, productive partnerships within the community. The team's efforts must clearly contribute to UC Davis Health being a destination of choice to all those we serve.
The mission categories are:
- Education – provides outstanding learning opportunities for students
- Research – leader in innovative research, making high-impact discoveries
- Clinical Care – provides high-quality patient-oriented services
- Community Engagement – enhances the qualify of life of our local and regional communities (Community organizations are welcome to submit letters of support.)
The purpose of the Dean's Team Award for Inclusive Excellence is to acknowledge outstanding, high-performing, multidisciplinary team efforts and approaches that contribute to advancing inclusive excellence. The multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary team model should embody and exemplify a sustainable, collaborative and inclusive approach that aligns our collegial community with our mission of discovering and sharing knowledge to advance health. In the spirit of inclusive excellence, the team’s efforts must clearly contribute to UC Davis Health being a destination of choice to all those we serve.
The categories for this award are:
- Education – provides equitable access to outstanding learning opportunities for personal and professional growth that integrate inclusive and health equity principles
- Research –makes high-impact discoveries that focus on reducing/eliminating health inequities for the communities we serve
- Clinical Care – provides high-quality, patient-oriented, culturally-responsive care services
- Community Engagement – enhances the quality of life of our local and regional diverse communities (Community organizations are also welcome to submit nominations.)
2025 Award Recipients
Award for Excellence
Kurt Schaberg, M.D. (Dean's Award for Excellence in Education)
Kurt Schaberg is an associate health sciences clinical professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Schaberg is an anatomic pathologist with a special clinical interest in inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.
When medical student education was interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Schaberg created virtual courses, including “Diagnostic Medicine: Pathology in Practice,” to fill unanticipated gaps in training and ensure continued medical education.
For the past five years, he has continued to serve as the instructor of record for the course, which has enrolled almost 500 students. He also developed a large collection of popular educational notes and templates, with more than 740 pages of detailed illustrated guides updated weekly.
Diana Miglioretti, Ph.D., ScM (Dean's Award for Excellence in Research)
Diana Miglioretti is a professor and division chief of biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences. She is co-leader of the Population Sciences and Cancer Control Program at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Miglioretti co-leads the U.S. Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a national network of breast-imaging registries with data on 15 million breast imaging examinations since 1994. Her work quantifies the benefits and consequences of breast cancer screening across age, risk, interval and modality, and translates evidence into practice and policy.
She has developed risk-prediction models that move screening from age-based to risk-based paradigms, quantified modality performance overall and by patient factors, identified and addressed disparities and compared long-term outcomes of tailored screening strategies using simulation modeling.
Rachel Whitmer, Ph.D. (Dean's Award for Excellence in Research)
Rachel Whitmer is the co-director of the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, chief of the division of epidemiology and a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Department of Neurology.
For the third year in a row, Whitmer is the principal investigator with the largest NIH funding at UC Davis and in public health sciences nationwide.
Her high‑impact discoveries, including pioneering dementia risk scores and establishing long‑term links between midlife cardiometabolic factors and later cognitive decline, have reshaped scientific understanding and expanded knowledge of dementia in historically understudied populations.
Whitmer leads the U.S. POINTER Study at UC Davis Health, a large clinical trial demonstrating how lifestyle programs can improve cognition in older adults. UC Davis Health is one of only six U.S. academic and health care systems that conducted the study in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association.
Award for Inclusive Excellence
Melody Tran-Reina, M.D.
Melody Tran-Reina is a health sciences associate clinical professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the executive director of the School of Medicine Community Health Scholars (CHS) pathway programs.
Tran-Reina created a four-year longitudinal CHS curriculum emphasizing health equity, cultural humility, community engagement, leadership training, professional development, mentorship, and scholarship.
Tran-Reina also led the School of Medicine’s efforts to explore establishing the first regional medical campus in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz. She developed Programs in Medical Education Central Coast (PRIME Central Coast), the first program of its kind to collaborate with another UC campus, to recruit and train future physicians from and for the region.
Award for Excellence in Mentoring
Xiao-Jing Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
Xiao-Jing Wang is the chief science officer and associate director for basic science of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is also a professor and the Robert E. Stowell Endowed Chair in Experimental Pathology in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.
Wang’s laboratory has made significant contributions to cancer research. Her work has led to a new clinical trial at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center that combines immunotherapy with radiation to treat patients with recurrent head and neck cancers.
Wang was recognized for her commitment to mentoring early-stage investigators, providing guidance on prioritizing projects, shaping research directions and navigating academic advancement. She leads large interdisciplinary programs while fostering high-impact collaborations, ensures recognition of her trainees and creates a collaborative and respectful environment.
Team Award for Excellence
Parkinson’s Disease Multidisciplinary Team (Dean's Team Award for Excellence in Clinical Care)
The Parkinson’s Disease Multidisciplinary Team achieved outstanding results in education, research, clinical care and community engagement, leading to the opening of a Parkinson’s Disease Multidisciplinary clinic and the designation as the region’s first Parkinson’s Foundation Center of Excellence.
Led by Norika Malhado-Chang, a health sciences clinical professor in the Department of Neurology, and Lin Zhang, a professor in the Department of Neurology, this designation acknowledges the expertise of specialized interdisciplinary healthcare teams providing the most current clinical care for patients with Parkinson's Disease. The Parkinson’s Disease Team includes clinicians and researchers in multiple School of Medicine departments and engages a wide network of community members and affiliate organizations.
The team provides education, resources and support to patients and caregivers on disease management and progression.
Team Award for Inclusive Excellence
California Reducing Disparities Project Team (Dean's Team Award for Inclusive Excellence in Community Engagement)
The California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) is a statewide initiative to reduce mental health disparities by supporting community-based organizations in delivering culturally and linguistically responsive services.
Led by project manager Katherine Ferry, the CRDP team exemplifies inclusive excellence through sustained, community-centered engagement. The CRDP advances health equity, strengthens trust with underserved communities and has helped establish UC Davis Health as a trusted partner and destination of choice for those it serves.
As part of this initiative, the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities serves as the Latino Technical Assistance Provider, offering capacity building, training and implementation support to seven community-based organizations serving Latino communities across multiple counties, while contributing to a broader statewide network of 33 organizations.
2024 Award Recipients
Award for Excellence
Aijun Wang, Ph.D. (Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research)
Aijun Wang is a Chancellor's Fellow and professor of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering. He is the vice chair for translational research, innovation and entrepreneurship for the Department of Surgery and co-director of the Center for Surgical Bioengineering. Wang's lab engineers and develops stem cells, gene therapies and nanomedicine, translating these technologies from the lab to clinical trials. He is co-principal investigator for the CuRe Trial — the world's first spina bifida treatment combining fetal surgery with stem cells — and is also working to develop a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In 2024, Wang was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.
Matthew Bobinski, M.D., Ph.D. (Dean’s Award for Excellence in Clinical Care)
Matthew Bobinski, professor in the Department of Radiology and vice chair of clinical operations, led critical initiatives to enhance patient care, safety and access. Bobinski led the development of new MRI protocols for patients with non-conditional and legacy pacemakers and devices, making UC Davis one of the first hospitals in Northern California to offer this service. The new protocols ensure patients receive the best possible diagnostic imaging without unnecessary delays or risks. Bobinski also worked to secure approval for new AI modules, providing a standardized method of measurement for aneurysm management.
Award for Inclusive Excellence
Luis Carvajal-Carmona, Ph.D.
Luis G. Carvajal-Carmona is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and an associate vice chancellor of inclusive excellence. Many of Carvajal-Carmona's research grants address equity gaps in health care. His lab, supported by several large multi-center and multi-institutional grants from the National Institutes of Health, launched the Embajadoras Program, promoting health initiatives for local community health workers. Carvajal-Carmona launched the “Becoming a Latino Scientist” seminar series and created a model for cancer health promotion in Latino communities. He also co-led initiatives to provide free COVID-19 testing to farmworker communities in the Central Valley.
Award for Excellence in Mentoring
Joshua J. Fenton, M.D., M.P.H.
Joshua J. Fenton is a professor and vice chair of research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and a member of the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research. Fenton has played a crucial role in mentoring early and mid-career faculty to become successful UC Davis researchers. Fenton leads a diverse and growing team of investigators, working with faculty and staff across different departments. His leadership has resulted in numerous extramural grants, driving studies on opioid prescribing safety and overdose risks. Julie Beth Schweitzer, Ph.D. Julie Schweitzer is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Schweitzer’s extensive experience as a mentor — guiding postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and more than 100 undergraduate students — demonstrates her commitment to fostering meaningful professional relationships and building a strong research workforce. She directs the Clinical and Translational Science Center Mentoring Academy for Research Excellence and Mentored Clinical Research Training programs, supporting mentors and junior researchers in the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing and the School of Medicine.
Team Award for Excellence
Neuroprosthetics Lab Team (Dean’s Award for Team Excellence in Research)
The UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab is co-led by Sergey Stavisky and David Brandman, assistant professors in the Department of Neurological Surgery. The team develops technology to restore abilities impacted by neurological injury and disease. Recently, the team restored an ALS patient's ability to communicate — through a computer, and in his own voice. The team includes experts in neuroengineering, systems neuroscience, neurological surgery, machine learning, and computational neuroscience — ranging from adjunct faculty and project scientists to postdocs, Ph.D. students and research staff.
Team Award for Inclusive Excellence
Heart Plus Clinic – Cardiology
Shirin Jimenez, health services clinical professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, established UC Davis Health’s first co-management clinic for patients with heart failure related to stimulant use. Seeing a critical gap in health care, Jimenez advocated across the health system to secure multi-disciplinary services. Collaborating with the addiction medicine division, the Heart Plus Clinic provides comprehensive care to improve outcomes and reduce disparities.