School of Medicine celebrates recipients of 2025 Dean’s Excellence Awards

The School of Medicine recently celebrated the 2025 Dean’s Excellence Awards, recognizing faculty members and interdisciplinary teams for outstanding achievements.

The annual awards celebrate education, mentoring, research, clinical care, inclusion, and team excellence.

“This year’s award recipients represent the spirit of collaboration, innovation and commitment to excellence that defines our medical school,” said School of Medicine Dean Susan Murin. “These exceptional faculty and teams are transforming lives and helping shape the future of medical education, healthcare and research discoveries.”

Recipients of the 2025 Dean’s Excellence Awards

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education

Kurt Schaberg

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.

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring

Xiao-Jing Wang

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.

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research

Diana Miglioretti

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

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.

Dean’s Award for Inclusive Excellence

Melody Tran-Reina

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.

Dean’s Award for Team Excellence in Clinical Care

Parkinson’s Disease Multidisciplinary Team

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.

Dean’s Team Award for Inclusive Excellence in Community Engagement

California Reducing Disparities Project Team

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.