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Leah Lowenstein Award

The Leah Lowenstein Award is presented annually to the faculty member who is the model of a medical educator whose humane teaching reaches and influences all students regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic background. These are the traits espoused by the late Leah Lowenstein, a medical educator and first female Dean of a co-educational medical school. Any faculty member at the School of Medicine may be nominated for the award, and nominations are made by members of the graduating class of Yale School of Medicine.

About Leah Lowenstein

Leah Lowenstein was one of just three women in her medical class in 1954 at the University of Wisconsin and went on to become a lead kidney disease researcher and a faculty member at Boston University School of Medicine, and served on the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine and the Thorndike Memorial Laboratories at Harvard Medical School. She was also a medical advisor for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and a member of the study sections of the National Institutes of Health. In 1982, she was named vice president and dean of Jefferson Medical College, the first woman dean of a co-educational medical school. Lowenstein grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and was an accomplished cellist—a music scholarship helped to finance her medical education. She earned her PhD at Somerville College, was a research associate at Oxford University, and completed her residency at Beth Israel Hospital at Harvard Medical School and a fellowship in renal and metabolic diseases at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Tufts. Throughout her career, Lowenstein was an advocate for women in medicine.

Leah Lowenstein Award Recipients

Name Year
Sabrina Nunez, PhD 2025
Kelly Olino, MD 2024
Silvia Vilarinho, MD, PhD 2023
Ninani Kombo, MD 2022
Jeremy J. Moeller, MD, MSc 2021
Anna B. Reisman, MD 2020
Howard Forman, MD, MBA 2019
Karen Jubanyik, MD 2018
Susan Kashaf, MD, MPH 2017
Alfred Lee, MD, PhD 2017
Mark B. Russi, MD, MPH 2016
Karen A. Santucci, MD 2015
Margaret Bia, MD 2014
Andrea B. Asnes, MD 2013
Mark R. Mercurio, MD 2012
Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS 2011
Benjamine R. Doolittle, MD, MDiv 2011
Jessica L. Illuzzi, MD 2010
Benjamine R. Doolittle, MD, MDiv 2010
Laura Ment, MD 2009
Nina R. Horowitz, MD 2008
Andrés S. Martin, MD, MPH 2008
Vincent J. Quagliarello, MD 2007
Karen A. Santucci, MD 2007
Nancy R. Angoff, MPH, MEd 2006
Catherine Chiles, MD 2005
Eve R. Colson, MD 2004
Susan M. Richman, MD 2003
Marie E. Egan, MD 2002
Gail D’Onofrio, MD 2001
Lynn Tanoue, MD 2000
Robert H. Gifford, MD 2000
Shanta Kapadia, MD 1999
Ronnie A. Rosenthal, MD 1998
Janet B. Henrich, MD 1997
Barbara Ward, MD 1996
Margaret J. Bia, MD 1995
Coralie Shaw, MD 1994
Barbara Ward, MD 1993
Michele Barry, MD 1992
Linda Bartoshuk, PhD 1991
Anne McBride Curtis, MD 1990
Joy Hirsch, PhD 1989
Laura Ment, MD 1988
Barbara Kinder, MD 1987
Ken Barwick, MD 1986
Harriet Wolfe, MD 1986
Shanta Kapadia, MD 1986