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1940s
Thomas J. Mudge, ’45 MD, a veteran, turned 100 years old over Memorial Day weekend and was honored by his hometown of Marquette, Michigan, for a lifetime of service.
1960s
Jeffrey M. Ignatoff, ’67 MD, ’75 GME, of Savannah, Georgia, continues in his post-retirement “second career” as associate professor of Medical Education at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah. In addition to his involvement in pre-clinical education, he was recently appointed vice chair of the combined departments of Pathology and Clinical Science Education, with responsibilities in curriculum management and faculty development. Prior to relocating to Georgia, he was head of the Division of Urology at Northwestern Healthcare in Evanston, and is emeritus associate professor of Urology at Feinberg School of Medicine. Ignatoff and his wife Kathy have thoroughly enjoyed their years in Savannah, as well as traveling and keeping up with their three children and six grandchildren.
1970s
Allen R. Nissenson, ’71 MD, ’76 GME, was appointed to the board of directors of Angion Biomedica Corporation. Nissenson is a member of the board of directors of Rockwell Medical, Inc. and an emeritus professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he previously served as director of the Dialysis Program and associate dean. He is emeritus chief medical officer of DaVita Kidney Care, a former president of the Renal Physicians Association, and current member of the Government Affairs Committee. Nissenson previously served as president of the Southern California End-Stage Renal Disease Network, as well as chair of the Medical Review Board.
Bonnie Typlin, ’70,’74 MD, was among the several Northwestern Alumni Association recognized in September for outstanding contributions to the university. She has volunteered for the Northwestern Alumni Association for more than 45 years. A longtime member of the Feinberg School of Medicine’s Medical Alumni Board, she served as board president from 2007 to 2009. Typlin is also a founding member of the Council of One Hundred and a member of the NU Club of Tucson. Typlin was a pediatrician in Chicago for more than two decades before moving to Arizona, where she served as chief medical officer for a children’s rehabilitative outpatient facility and joined a pediatrics practice. After graduating from Northwestern with a BA in biology and an MD from the Feinberg School of Medicine, she completed her residency in pediatrics and an ambulatory fellowship at Ohio State University.
Michael T. Lotze, ’75 MD, was appointed chief cellular therapy officer at Nurix Therapeutics, Inc. Lotze previously served as the chief scientific officer of Iovance Biotherapeutics and vice president of research at GlaxoSmithKline. He also served as professor of surgery, immunology and bioengineering, vice chair of research within the Department of Surgery, and director for Damage Associated Molecular Pattern Molecule Laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hillman Cancer Center. Lotze also is associate editor of the Journal of Immunotherapy.
1980s
David Aizuss, ’80 MD, an ophthalmologist in Los Angeles, California, was elected to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Board of Trustees. Aizuss is a longtime leader in organized medicine; he is the immediate past president of the California Medical Association and a current member of the AMA Council on Legislation. During his time as a Northwestern medical student, he served as a leader in the Illinois State Medical Society’s Medical Student Section and on the AMA-Medical Students Section Governing Council. He also served on the AMA-Resident and Fellow Section Governing Council for three years.
Boris D. Lushniak, ’83 MD, professor and dean in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, published an editorial on August 20 in the Chicago Tribune entitled “The Big Ten Made the Right Decision to Cancel Fall Sports.”
Mark J. Sontag, ’83 MD, gave a Grand Rounds lecture for Google’s medical staff in Mountainview, California, in July titled, “Acute vs. Chronic Pain: The Mind Body Continuum.” Sontag specializes in sports medicine and chronic pain management, having founded two private practices in the San Francisco Bay area: ReMeDy Medical Group and SPARC
Medical Group.
Katherine V. Nichols, ’85 MD, recently retired and shared this update: “I have retired as of the end of 2019 (remember, I am 6 to 10 years older than most of you). Turns out it was just in time, meaning that I am watching COVID-19 unfold from the sidelines while keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers. After graduating with this wonderful class, I moved on to a pediatrics residency at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine at Yale. From 1991–1996, I paid back my Air Force scholarship, working as a neonatologist at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia. While there, I was also on the clinical faculty at Eastern Virginia Medical School and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Upon leaving the military, I chose to stay in Virginia, my home state, and have been in the big town/small city of Lynchburg since. By 2006, the challenges of working 36-hour days in the intensive care nursery as a single, widowed parent became too much, so with my kids moving into middle school and high school, I decided to make the transition to general pediatrics, which allowed for a more flexible schedule. I retired from an eight-person pediatrics practice.
My kids are now adults. Ben is an audio engineer in Los Angeles. Jeff is completing a PhD in biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech. No grandkids, one grand-dog.
Other than some volunteer work and as much socially distanced hiking as my dog and I can get in, my retirement has been spent in COVID-19 lockdown. Not what I expected, but then, 2020 has not been what any of us expected.
The four years we spent together at NUMS (as it was known) were excellent, leading to a fulfilling career and life. I wish you all the very best as you move forward with whatever challenges life and medicine bring. Retirement is a good thing!”
William Yates, ’85 MD, was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune for his family business’s efforts to help keep workers and patrons safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yates Enterprises distributes products to help people fight the pandemic, including an innovative walkthrough body temperature-taking device, face masks, and more. Yates is a graduate of the Honors Program in Medical Education and practiced as a trauma surgeon after graduating from Feinberg.
Carla Hightower, ’87 MD, ’91 GME, ’02 MBA, was featured on Northwestern Intersections, a podcast by the Northwestern Alumni Association. In the episode, “Eating Well in the Pandemic,” Hightower “explores the connection between nutrition and many chronic health conditions that exacerbate the effects of COVID-19. As a physician, a certified integrative health coach and corporate wellness consultant, Carla shares some ideas on how to make lasting changes to our eating habits so our bodies can operate and feel their best.”
Bruce K. Patterson, ’89 MD, ’94 GME, founder and chief executive officer of IncellDx, recently announced the patent filing with the USPTO, Pre-EUA, and FDA for the CCL5/RANTES Utility as a diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic biomarker in COVID-19.
1990s
Vijay Shah, ’91 MD, was recently appointed as the Carol M. Gatton Chairman of Medicine and Distinguished Investigator at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Raymond Sanchez, ’94 MD, is chief medical officer of Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings, Inc., which announced that they have entered into a business combination agreement, which will allow them to further advance their clinical programs and support their research and development of neuroscience drugs. Sanchez is currently the executive co-chair of the International Society for CNS Drug Development and a trustee and member of the board of directors of the Connecticut Mental Health Center Foundation and Yale School of Medicine, as well as several other not-for-profit organizations.
Samantha Meltzer-Brody, ’96 MD, is the recipient of the 2020 Oliver Max Gardner Award. The award recognizes faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who have “made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race” and is the highest honor that the system confers on faculty. Meltzer-Brody is the Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry. She also is director of the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders.
Alumni in the News
Speaking Out on Behalf of Black Women
After Michelle Obama acknowledged on her podcast that she felt a low-grade depression due to the state of today’s world, Aderonke Bamgbose Pederson, ’15 MD, ’19 GME, instructor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg, Brandi Jackson, ’15 MD, a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center, and Crystal Clark, MD, MSc, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at Feinberg, joined with their colleagues to co-write an open letter in support of the former first lady. The letter, signed by 200 of their peers, came to the attention of Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens, who interviewed the physicians and printed their letter. Below is an excerpt from that letter:
“Dear Mrs. Obama,
As Black female psychiatrists in the United States, we thank you for your openness in reflecting on your mental health in these times. We stand in solidarity with the vulnerability you expressed, which we know many other Black women experience.
We share with you the burden of current events, including the disproportionate number of deaths of Black people from COVID-19 and the killings of Black people at the hands of police — especially Black women like Breonna Taylor.
As Black psychiatrists, we represent less than 5% of the members of our profession in the United States. Particularly as Black women, who are so often unseen and unheard, we uniquely recognize and bear the toll that current events have on our communities. Thus, both professionally and personally, we affirm your statement that it is essential that all people — including Black women — have the freedom to express their feelings without fear of stigma.”
2000s
Lawrence Adam Zeidman, ’04 MD, ’08 GME, recently published a book, Brain Science Under the Swastika: Ethical Violations, Resistance, and Victimization of Neuroscientists in Nazi Europe, drawing from neuroscience history and ethics. Zeidman currently serves as an
associate professor of Neurology and a physician at Loyola University’s Maywood campus. He lives in Chicago with his wife, an attorney, and two children.
Sadiya Khan, ’09 MD, ’10, ’12 GME, ’14 MS, ’16 GME, is the senior author of a study published in The British Medical Journal, which found that deaths caused by heart failure and hypertensive heart disease are on the rise in the U.S., especially among Black women and men, despite medical and surgical advances in heart disease management. The study is the first of its kind to comprehensively characterize mortality over nearly 20 years across a spectrum of heart disease types, examining the differences between sex and racial groups among various age groups and geography. Read more on page 16.
Brian J. Miller, ’11 MD, MBA, MPH, joined Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an assistant professor of Medicine. Miller will practice hospital medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and continue his work in health policy. He was appointed as a member of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee.
Javier Guevara, Jr., ’12 MD, Medical Alumni Association Board member, was recently awarded the Degree of Fellow for the American Academy of Family Physicians for his contributions to the specialty and the academy.
2020
Patricia “Oby” Ekwueme, ’20 MD, ’20 MPH, is the recipient of the 2020 Daniel Hale Williams Diversity and Inclusion Student Award. Each year, this award is bestowed upon one student who epitomizes the vision that leaders at Feinberg embrace about how diversity and inclusion should manifest in its culture.
GME
Jeffrey Sherman, MD, ’84, ’85 GME, Medical Alumni Association Board member, was recently recognized in Pharma Voice as one of the “Pharma Voice 100 Inspirational Leaders … having an extraordinary and positive impact on their colleagues, companies, and the life-sciences ecosystem.” Sherman, chief medical officer and executive vice president for Horizon Therapeutics, was described in the publication as a “champion for rare diseases … raising the bar by developing and embracing best practices for patient and professional engagement.”
Cheryl Walker-McGill, MD, ’89 GME, MBA,
assumed the position of chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) Board of Directors for a one-year term. Walker-McGill has been an FSMB board member since 2016. She served on the North Carolina Medical Board for six years, chairing many committees during her tenure and serving as president of the Board from 2015–2016. She is a board-
certified allergist, immunologist, and internist and serves as medical director at Carolina Complete Health in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Melissa Simon, MD, ’06 GME, was the first author of a discussion paper published by the National Academy of Medicine, which asserts that health and healthcare disparities are ever-present, despite efforts to address health equity. The paper describes health equity as imperative in a “patient and family engaged care culture,” and that healthcare organizations, institutions, and providers must take a health-equity-centered, population health approach.
Rachel Issaka, MD, ’13, ’14 GME, recently published a featured article on racism and medicine in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Issaka is a gastroenterologist and assistant professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington.
