Scholars, Trainees Continue to Thrive

The NUCATS Institute takes great pride in the remarkable achievements of its career development award alumni — a community of scholars and trainees whose dedication to advancing clinical and translational science continues to shape the future of human health. Over the past year, many of our career award alumni have published in peer-reviewed journals, achieved funding success, and attained academic promotions.

Monica Bianco, MD, assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, was recently awarded a nearly $1-million NIH K23 to continue developing an early life prediction risk score for impaired glucose tolerance/youth onset type 2 diabetes.

Carol Haywood, PhD, OTR/L, is exploring Disability-Competent Diabetes Care with a new American Diabetes Association Pilot Award.

Among other achievements in 2025, Colleen Peyton, DPT, MSCI, was named associate professor; Anna Pfenniger, MD, PhD, received significant industry-sponsored funding; Allison Letkiewicz, PhD, received a Ken and Ruth Davee Award for Innovative Investigations; Lisa Van Wagner, MD, was appointed director of the internal medicine clinical scientist training program at UTSW; Muriel Jean Jaques, MD, MPP, is now division chief for Academic Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the UIC College of Medicine; James Elliott, PT, PhD, published his first book, “(dis)Connected;” and Alan Zhou, MD, is to become Chief of Medical Dermatology.