University of Iowa
Carver College of Medicine
2008 Distinguished Alumni Awards

The Distinguished Alumni Award is the highest honor given by the UI Carver College of Medicine to recognize graduates for their accomplishments as health care providers, scientists and educators. Medicine Iowa invites you to meet the 2008 recipients in the Award for Service category, marking significant contributions and leadership in their profession or community; and the Award for Achievement category, for advancements in science, medicine and medical education.

Carol Aschenbrener, MD (’68 MS, ’74 R pathology)
Award for Service

Portrait: Carol Aschenbrener, MD

One of the most challenging forms of service is leadership. Carol Aschenbrener has excelled as a leader in her own right and also has worked energetically to prepare other women for leadership in academic medicine.

Aschenbrener’s career trajectory received an early boost at the UI, where she earned a master’s degree in anatomy and returned to complete her specialty training in neuropathology and anatomic pathology. She went on to join the UI Carver College of Medicine faculty and to achieve progressively higher administrative ranks within the College. In 1992 she became chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the first woman to head a public academic health center.

In 1997, Aschenbrener relocated to Washington, D.C., to begin a consulting practice in organizational effectiveness, leadership and executive coaching. She joined the Association of American Medical Colleges in 2004 and today serves as executive vice president and chief strategy officer of that organization. She also has served with the three medical education accrediting bodies, as well as the National Board of Medical Examiners and others.

Among her many professional activities is Aschenbrener’s involvement with the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for Women, which she serves as advisor and faculty member. The yearlong program has graduated nearly 475 fellows since its founding in 1995. Another project, the AAMC’s Professional Development Seminars for Women in Academic Medicine, which Aschenbrener developed with former AAMC staff member Janet Bickel, is now in its 22nd year.

A Dubuque, Iowa, native, Aschenbrener cites both nature and nurture for her interest in leadership. The nurturing influences include her grandfather, and her teacher and friend, Sister Bernice Ann Huberty. Her UI mentors also played significant roles. George Penick, MD, professor emeritus and former head of pathology, "gave me opportunities to lead early in my career, helped me learn from my mistakes and introduced me to the concept of servant-leadership," she said. And past Distinguished Alumni Award recipient John Eckstein (’50 MD, ’54 R), professor emeritus and former dean of medicine, "modeled daily the kind of leader I hoped to be."

Billy G. Hudson, PhD (’66 PhD)
Award for Achievement

Portrait: Billy Hudson, PhD

Billy Hudson is internationally known for his research on hereditary kidney diseases, has been a program leader at the University of Kansas and now Vanderbilt University and co-founded two biotech companies. Yet he hasn’t forgotten his rural Arkansas roots.

He and his wife and siblings developed the Aspirnaut Initiative to fund the addition of laptop computers and iPods on Arkansas school buses, establishing e–learning connections with university professors during rural students’ long bus rides to and from school. "Aspirnaut" is the term coined by organizers to describe students who aspire, seek and achieve.

"The intent of the Hudson family is to give back to society because many friends and mentors have paved the way for us to get an education, the foundation of our careers," said Hudson. "We understand the plight of rural youth, having walked a mile in their shoes."

Hudson’s career highlights include discovering the molecular underpinnings of autoimmune and hereditary kidney diseases, a key to understanding the pathologies of Alport syndrome and Goodpasture’s syndrome. He received the Homer W. Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology in 2003.

In 1980, Hudson became the dean of research at the University of Kansas Medical Center. While at Kansas, he served as a founding member and vice chairman of the Medical Center’s Kidney Institute. He left his teaching post at Kansas after 22 years to become director of the Center for Matrix Biology and the Elliot V. Newman Professor of Medicine, Biochemistry and Pathology at Vanderbilt University, his home since 2002.

As an entrepreneur, Hudson has co-founded two biotech companies to bring to market a potential treatment he developed for diabetic kidney disease, which is currently being tested.

Wayne Yokoyama, MD (’81 R internal medicine, ’85 F internal medicine/rheumatology)
Award for Achievement

Portrait: Wayne Yokoyama, MD

Wayne Yokoyama realized his passion for biomedical research in high school while watching news coverage of Hawaii’s first kidney transplant between identical twins on a black and white television set.

"I remember a TV news reporter interviewing the transplant surgeon and asking, ‘Why identical twins?’" said Yokoyama. "I knew the answer!" The twins had matching tissues, so the recipient would not reject the donor tissue.

The answer came easy to Yokoyama, whose research project on tissue typing–now known as HLA typing–won the top prize in Hawaii’s high school science fair. Following that honor, and with further encouragement from his high school biology teacher and physician-science mentors, Yokoyama attended medical school at the University of Hawaii.

Today, as a world authority on natural killer cells and their molecular biology, Yokoyama has made fundamental discoveries of how these white blood cells help the body control infection and cancer. These findings are important in providing insight into clinical outcomes from human diseases, such as resolution vs. chronicity of infections.

"I have had almost a lifelong interest in the immune system," said Yokoyama. "Natural killer cells belong to the innate immune system whose role is to provide early control while alerting the rest of the body’s immune defense to mount a robust response to a tumor or infection. In that sense, the innate immune system acts like an armed guard on patrol."

Yokoyama is professor of medicine and of pathology and immunology and director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he was formerly chief of the rheumatology division. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and holds the Sam J. and Audrey Loew Levin Chair for Basic Research in Arthritis. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Roger I. Ceilley, MD (’71 MD, ’77 R dermatology)
Award for Service

Portrait: Roger Ceilley, MD

For over two decades, and as a past president of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), the specialty’s largest professional organization, Roger Ceilley has been raising public awareness of sun safety and the risks of skin cancer.

He has promoted the inclusion of sun–safety curricula in elementary school education and organized national public educational programs addressing skin cancer. In 1997, Ceilley worked with the AAD Public Education and Skin Cancer Detection/Prevention Program to develop a grant program to build sun-safe playground facilities.

"Children would be outside playing during peak hours of sunlight and have no opportunities for shade," said Ceilley, a native of Cedar Falls, Iowa. "We provided them with protection."

Ceilley co-authored the AAD’s guidelines of care for people experiencing skin conditions ranging from malignant melanoma to psoriasis, and he currently chairs the AAD’s Council on Communications.

In addition to his role as a community-based dermatologist in private practice in West Des Moines, Ceilley is a clinical professor of dermatology at the UI Carver College of Medicine.

In 1976, Ceilley learned the Mohs surgery technique from Dr. Frederick Mohs. Mohs, of the University of Wisconsin, developed the technique for excision of skin cancer. This new and innovative procedure was designed to eliminate the entire cancerous area while removing the minimum amount of healthy tissue. Upon completion of the program in 1977, Ceilley returned to the UI and developed the Mohs Micrographic Surgery and Cutaneous Oncology program and fellowship in dermatology.

"The University of Iowa is a tremendous asset to Iowa, their graduates are national leaders and I’m proud to be a part of it," said Ceilley.

John Olney, MD (’56 BA, ’63 MD)
Award for Achievement

Portrait: John Olney, MD

John Olney didn’t consider a career in medicine until he was 28 years old. His youngest sister was severely ill with multiple sclerosis and he wanted to find an effective treatment to reverse the course of her illness.

"It was naîve to believe I could be successful because I didn’t even have a strong educational background in science," said Olney, a native of Marathon, Iowa. "I had a BA degree but had to take preparatory courses in science to convince the medical college to accept me."

Once in medical school, Olney persuaded a biochemistry professor to grant him lab access, allowing him to conduct his own research. By studying the role of glial cells–one of two cell types in the brain–in the disease process leading to multiple sclerosis, Olney earned the Borden Undergraduate Research Award in Medicine.

"I have always been intrigued with the brain and workings of the mind, so I decided to specialize in the clinical field of psychiatry, with the intention of doing basic research aimed at discovering methods for curing or preventing neuropsychiatric disorders," said Olney, the John P. Feighner Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

In the late 1960s, only a few years after completing his psychiatry residency, Olney made important discoveries that opened an entirely new field of neuroscience research. His determination to follow data, even if contrary to prevailing beliefs, led to the discovery of glutamate as an excitatory neurotransmitter and killer of nerve cells in the brain–for which he coined the term "excitotoxicity," a word now used widely in medical science. Evidence generated by Olney and his many followers implicates glutamate excitotoxicity in numerous brain disorders, including stroke, epilepsy, head trauma, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Olney recently made a new discovery–that certain drugs used in pediatric and obstetric medicine, including sedatives, anesthetics and anticonvulsants, can cause neurons in the developing animal brain to self–destruct. His current research seeks to clarify the relevance of these findings to human neurodevelopmental disorders.

James Scott, MD (’59 BA, ’62 MD, ’72 R ob/gyn)
Award for Achievement

Portrait: James Scott, MD

In the history of Obstetrics & Gynecology, which first appeared in 1953 and has become the most respected peer-reviewed journal in the field, only five editors have guided the publication. James Scott, an international authority on recurrent miscarriage, has been at the helm since 2001.

The "green journal," as it is affectionately known, is the official publication of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For more than a half-century, the green journal has been a worldwide leader in continuing education in ob-gyn. Scott’s predecessor as editor was Roy Pitkin (’56 BA, ’59 MD, ’63 R), former department chair at the UI and UCLA who received the College’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Achievement in 2002.

"Serving as editor of the premier journal in my specialty is fascinating," said Scott. "My goal for what we publish has been to strive for excellence by maintaining scientific integrity, using an evidence–based approach and emphasizing clinical relevance. I have also tried to make the journal educational, entertaining and user friendly."

During his nearly four decades as an ob–gyn physician, Scott’s research has focused on alterations in the immune response in pregnancy and autoimmunity and its relationship to maternal and fetal disease. His studies have played an important role in understanding recurrent miscarriage, pregnancy in transplant patients and complications associated with other immunologic problems in obstetrics and gynecology.

A native of Burlington, Iowa, Scott had a practice in Grundy Center during the 1960s and served on the UI ob-gyn faculty in the mid–’70s prior to his appointment in 1977 as ob-gyn department chair at the University of Utah, a position he held for 18 years.

As a departmental chair, Scott often advised faculty and residents to "just do what is right."

"Although this was usually said in jest, it is surprising how many still remember that phrase and have found it useful in their own careers," Scott said.

For more information on the 2008 honorees, or to make a nomination for 2009, go to www.medicine.uiowa.edu/Alumni/programs/daa.html