Internal Medicine Faculty Awards & Promotions Ceremony 2025
2025 Faculty Awards & Recognition Ceremony
We recently gathered to celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of faculty members who have received departmental awards and earned academic promotions. Their dedication to patient care, research, and education continues to strengthen the Department of Internal Medicine as a leader in academic medicine.
The ceremony, led by Department Chair Dr. John Inadomi, served as a meaningful recognition of their achievements.
Congratulations to all award recipients and newly promoted faculty.
Details of the award winners and faculty promotions are listed below:
Awardees
Theodore G. Liou, MD - DOIM Lifetime Achievement Award
Theodore Liou, MD, is Director of the Adult CF Center at the University of Utah, Professor of Internal Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah. He is triple boarded in Internal, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. He has taken care of patients with a highly individualized personal touch and directed the award winning team for CF for more than seventeen years.
Dr. Liou's research interests include cystic fibrosis, sepsis, ARDS, airway inflammation, pneumonia, airway ecology and antibiotic discovery. He has landmark articles in cystic fibrosis and lung transplantation in journals including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine as well as articles with high impact in Lancet, the American Journal of Epidemiology, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, CHEST, the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis and others. He has been invited to speak at The Gordon Conference on Enzymes, Co-enzymes and Metabolic pathways, Mayo Clinic, McGill, Case Western, U Penn, Capitol University Beijing, Children's Hospital LA, USC, Merck, Genentech, the North American CF Conference, the International Conference of the American Thoracic Society, the American Society of Microbiology, the International Society for Heart Lung Transplantation, the Italian CF Research Foundation and the annual European CF society Meetings.
Kimberly E. Hanson, MD, MHS - Service to the Department Award
Kimberly Hanson, MD, MHS is a board certified physician in Adult Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology. She has specialized expertise in the diagnosis and management of opportunistic viral, fungal and mycobacterial diseases. Her primary clinical focus is transplant and cancer chemotherapy-related infections.
Wallace L. Akerley, MD - Thomas H. Caine Award for Clinical Excellence
Wallace Akerley, MD is a medical oncologist with greater than 30 years experience as a principal investigator on numerous clinical research trials who actively cares for patients with lung cancer. He is the chairman of the Protocol Review and Monitoring Committee at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI), Director of the Lung Cancer Disease Center of Excellence at HCI and member of the NCCN's Steering Committee for Small Cell Lung Cancer Panel and NSCLC Panel.
Elizabeth A. Middleton, MD - William D. Odell and Margaret F. Odell Junior Investigator Award
Elizabeth A. Middleton, MD, is an assistant professor in the Division of Respiratory, Critical Care, and Occupational Pulmonary Medicine.
Srinivasan Beddhu, MD - John R. Hoidal Senior Investigator Award
Dr. Beddhu is a Professor and Dialysis Research Foundation Presidential Endowed Chair in the Department of Internal Medicine. His research focus is on cardiovascular disease, nutritional status and lifestyle factors in CKD and dialysis patients. He leads a strong research team that is conducting studies of large national databases using cutting-edge statistical techniques and investigator initiated randomized controlled trials.
His research is funded by NIH, VA and industry with his current total federal funding exceeding $10 million. He was actively involved for 9 years in the NHLBI-funded Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) as the Co-Director of the Utah Clinical Center Network (CCN) and the Utah site- PI. He has authored more than 150 publications with many papers in high impact journals. He has mentored junior faculty, post-docs, fellows, residents, graduate students and medical students, some of whom have become independent, funded investigators.
Mark A. Supiano, MD - Guy A. Zimmerman, MD Faculty Mentoring Award
Mark A. Supiano, MD, is a geriatrician in the University Hospital Geriatrics Clinic. As a geriatrician, his clinical interests include providing comprehensive geriatric assessment consultations with a particular interest in high blood pressure (hypertension) and disorders of blood pressure regulation (orthostatic or postural hypotension). Dr. Supiano received his MD from the University of Wisconsin and training in Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine from the University of Michigan.
Throughout his career, Dr. Supiano has responded to the demographic imperative of our aging population in his clinical practice of Geriatric Medicine, in conducting patient-oriented clinical research, and in a commitment to medical education and research training. His research has been recognized with awards from the American Geriatrics Society and the Gerontological Society of America and he is a Fellow in each of these societies.
He is currently a Board Member of the American Geriatrics Society and the Association of Directors of Academic Geriatric Programs.
Lindsey A. Fitzgerald, MD - Resident Mentor of the Year
Dr. Lindsey Fitzgerald is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies. She specializes in treating patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and lymphomas. She also treats veterans at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Her research interests include the management of aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphomas in the elderly population, outcomes for lymphomas treated with CAR T-cell therapy, and geographic variations in management and outcomes of aggressive lymphomas.
Dr. Fitzgerald graduated from Dartmouth College and obtained her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine prior to her training in Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology at the University of Utah. She is board certified in both Hematology and Medical Oncology.
Promoted Faculty
| Candidate | Current Track | Division |
|---|---|---|
| Tara Jones, MD, PharmD | Clinical | Cardiovascular Medicine |
| Audrey Jones, PhD | Research | Epidemiology |
| Craig Teerlink, PhD | Research | Epidemiology |
| Morgan Millar, PhD | Research | Epidemiology |
| Amir Kashani, MD | Clinical | Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition |
| Danielle Babbel, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Emily Signor, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| John Gerstenberger, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| John Nord, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Kira Watson, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Neil Argyle, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Vidya Gopinath, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Kristin Hueftle, MD | Clinical | Geriatrics |
| Megan Puckett, MD | Clinical | Geriatrics |
| Nicholas Brening, MD | Clinical | Geriatrics |
| Tiffany Volden, MD | Clinical | Geriatrics |
| Afaf Osman, MD | Clinical | Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies |
| Amandeep Godara, MBBS | Clinical | Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies |
| Yazan Abou-Ismail, MD | Clinical | Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies |
| Adrienne Carey, MD | Clinical | Infectious Diseases |
| Julia Lewis, DO | Clinical | Infectious Diseases |
| Sarah Gilligan, MD | Clinical | Nephrology & Hypertension |
| Tahir Zaman, MD | Clinical | Nephrology & Hypertension |
| Anna Chalmers, MD | Clinical | Oncology |
| Kathleen Kerrigan, DO | Clinical | Oncology |
| Andrew Freeman, MD | Clinical | Respiratory, Critical Care, and Occupational Pulmonary Medicine |
| Emily Beck, MD | Clinical | Respiratory, Critical Care, and Occupational Pulmonary Medicine |
| Candidate | Current Track | Division |
|---|---|---|
| Umang Swami, MD | Tenure | Oncology |
| Candidate | Current Track | Division |
|---|---|---|
| Deepika Reddy, MD | Clinical | Endocrinology and Metabolism |
| Vishnu Sundaresh, MD | Clinical | Endocrinology and Metabolism |
| Kenneth Boucher, PhD | Research | Epidemiology |
| Makoto Jones, MD | Tenure | Epidemiology |
| Andrew Gawron, MD, PhD | Clinical | Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition |
| Kathryn Byrne, MD | Clinical | Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition |
| Anne Cioletti, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Kencee Graves, MD | Clinical | General Internal Medicine |
| Carole Baraldi, MD | Clinical | Geriatrics |
| Paloma Cariello, MD | Clinical | Infectious Diseases |
| Aylin Rodan, MD, PhD | Tenure | Nephrology & Hypertension |
| Marcus Pezzolesi, PhD | Tenure | Nephrology & Hypertension |
| Christos Vaklavas, MD | Tenure | Oncology |
| Candidate | Track | Division |
|---|---|---|
| Anna E. Beaudin, PhD | Tenure | Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies |
| Candidate | Track | Division |
|---|---|---|
| Shannon M. Buckley, PhD | Tenure | Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies |