ASSOCIATION OF YALE ALUMNI IN MEDICINE DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI SERVICE AWARD presented to LAURA K. MANUELIDIS, M.D. ’67 June 2, 2018
On the 51st anniversary of your graduation, the Yale School of Medicine is proud to count you among its graduates, and hereby awards you the Distinguished Alumni Service Award.
A native of Brooklyn, the daughter of an architect and teacher, you attended Sarah Lawrence College and studied poetry to satisfy an insatiable curiosity that has been your lifelong trademark. When you met with then YSM dean of admissions, Thomas R. Forbes, who also taught the history of medicine, the Fates had already sealed for you a rich medical training, from education to residency, under the Yale system.
Work in Bangladesh as a medical student accentuated the problem of choosing between a commitment to intimate patient-oriented medicine and a resolute passion for understanding how the brain functions. You met the love of your life, Elias E. Manuelidis, an internationally known neuropathologist and neurology professor at Yale. With your deep intelligence, you were, in a very short time, teaching and researching during your residency in the pathology department and later moved with diagnostic neuropatholgy to the section of neurosurgery. One of your first students, Richard Kayne felt awed by your “unlimited potential,” and recognized you as “a person who never lost her sense of wonder that we are all born with.”
Besides your ground-breaking contributions to society’s knowledge and understanding of chromosome organization, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, you have given selflessly in service to the medical school through countless mentorships in your lab and beyond.
Besides your ground-breaking contributions to society’s knowledge and understanding of chromosome organization, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, you have given selflessly in service to the medical school through countless mentorships in your lab and beyond. A tireless advocate for students, you were in 1972 elected a fellow of Timothy Dwight College by the students. From 2005 to 2013, you served on the medical school alumni association executive committee. You remain as an active alumni committee member and student mentor. You’ve volunteered your time on the cross-cultural committee of the Yale University Art Gallery and continue to be involved in leadership on the Committee of the Status of Women in Medicine.
Today your friends, family, and classmates salute you for your service to the Yale School of Medicine and its ideals. You are a true daughter of Yale.