Faculty Awards & Honors

Constadina (Dina) Arvanitis, PhD, director of Feinberg’s Center for Advanced Microscopy (CAM), has been honored with the 2025 Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) Vice President’s Award for her outstanding leadership and service to the global scientific imaging community. The award, which celebrates the “unsung heroes” of microscopy, highlights individuals whose behind-the-scenes work has profoundly advanced the field, often without the spotlight that accompanies scientific breakthroughs. 

Rinad Beidas, PhD, the chair and Ralph Seal Paffenbarger professor of Medical Social Sciences, was elected the co-editor-in-chief of Implementation Science, the field’s flagship journal. “It is a huge honor and responsibility to be named co-editor-in-chief for our flagship journal Implementation Science,” Beidas said. “Our journal was founded in 2006 by Martin Eccles and Brian Mittman, two giants in the field. I was just getting started in my professional journey at that time, and publishing in that journal was aspirational for me.”  

Robert E. Brannigan ’88, ’92 MD, ’98 GME, the Janice Binstein Professor and vice chair of Clinical Urology in the Department of Urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Medicine, has been sworn in as president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). He is a past president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology and former chair of the ASRM Research Committee. Brannigan helped establish the integrated male fertility preservation program at Northwestern Medicine and is the director of the Andrology fellowship.

Yogesh Goyal, PhD, assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, a courtesy faculty of Chemical and Biological Engineering and of Biomedical Engineering at McCormick School of Engineering, a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, and an investigator at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, has been named a 2025-2028 Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation Grant Fellow, which recognizes early-stage biomedical investigators engaged in basic and translational research that has the potential to make fundamental advances in biomedical science. Goyal’s work fuses theory, computation, and single-cell experiments to uncover how cells make fate decisions — insights that could reshape our understanding of development and disease.  

Maha Hussain, MD, the Genevieve Teuton Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology and the deputy director and leader of the GU Oncology Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center has been awarded the first ever Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Women in Science Lifetime Achievement Award. “I am inspired and honored to receive this award,” Hussain said. “It has been a great privilege to work alongside extraordinary colleagues, patients, families, and partners like PCF, whose vision and investment in discovery and therapeutic innovation mirror my own. Together, our work is paying off—prostate cancer diagnostics and treatments are evolving at a tremendous pace, and I am excited about current advances and what the next generation of discoveries will bring.” 

Murali Prakriya, PhD, the Magerstadt Professor of Pharmacology, was named a 2025 Fellow of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Selected as one of just 17 honorees nationwide, Prakriya is recognized for his outstanding contributions to advancing pharmacology through scientific achievement, mentorship, and service to the field. His work played a central role in identifying and characterizing the store-operated Orai family of calcium channels, which are essential for immunity, inflammation, and host defense. 

Nilay Shah, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, has been selected by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) for the 2025 class of NAM Fellowships. Named the Gilbert S. Omenn Fellowship, Shah is recognized for his outstanding contributions to clinical advancement, innovative approach to cardiovascular disease prevention, and commitment to exceptional patient care. Shah conducts research in a variety of areas, including transmission of cardiovascular health and risk across generations; pregnancy-related cardiovascular risk factors in women and offspring; social determinants of health and social risk factors; and the application of digital health tools for cardiovascular risk assessment. 

Melissa Simon, MD, MPH, MBA, is the winner of the 2026 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). The AMWA Woman in Science Award is given to honor a woman who has made exceptional contributions to medical science, especially in women’s health, through her basic and/or clinical research, publications, and leadership in her field. Simon is internationally recognized for advancing health equity through research, education, and community engagement. She serves as vice chair for Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology and associate director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.  

Deborah Winter, PhD, Solovy/Arthritis Research Society Research Professor in the Division of Rheumatology, is the recipient of the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Aging Biology and Geroscience Research, a grant program that enables junior investigators with labs in the U.S. and Canada to advance research projects in basic biology of aging, as well as geroscience projects that translate advances in basic research on aging biology from the laboratory to the clinic, paving the way for healthspan-expanding therapeutics and treatments. The grant will support the Winter lab’s work Understanding the role of noisy chromatin deregulation in aging macrophages which aims to further our understanding of why macrophage function declines with age.