Ambika Ashraf, M.D., FAAP, FNLA

Ralph Frohsin Endowed Chair in Pediatric Endocrinology
Division Director of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes
Medical Director of Pediatric Endocrinology Clinics at Children’s of Alabama
Professor of Pediatrics at UAB Heersink School of Medicine

Lara Ianov, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology
Managing Director of the UAB Biological Data Science core
Bioinformatics Specialist in the CIRC Neurodevelopmental Bioinformatics Initiative

Helena Gutierrez, M.D.

Assistant Professor in the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
Medical Director of the Pediatric Liver Transplant Center

Tanecia Mitchell, Ph.D. 

Associate Professor in the Department of Urology
Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology
Scientist in the Nephrology Research and Training Center
Associate Scientist in the Immunology Institute

Tamera Coyne-Beasley, M.D., MPH, FAAP, FSAHM

Director of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics  

Michele Kong, M.D.

 Medical Director for Sensory Integration Program, Department of Pediatrics

Isabel Scarinci, Ph.D.

  Vice Chair of Global and Rural Health Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology

Rodney O. Tucker, M.D. 

 Professor of Palliative Care and Associate Director of DEI at O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, Department of Medicine

Dr. Daniel Chu
Department of Surgery

Dr. Chu is principal investigator of a K23 award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and multi-PI with Dr. Maria Pisu of a recent R01 award also from the NIMHD. Additionally, he demonstrates a strong aptitude for teaching and mentoring as evidenced by receipt of the 2019 Medical Student Teaching Award for the UAB Department of Surgery and the 2016 Marshall M. Urist Junior Faculty Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Carlos Estrada
Department of Medicine

As director of the Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM), Dr. Estrada has built a welcome and inclusive environment that has grown the faculty who are URiM from <5% to nearly 15% today, and GIM was recently ranked among the top 3 GIM Divisions nationally. He also has implemented programs to provide direct support for URiM faculty to lead recruitment efforts that have enhanced diversity in our residency program.

Dr. Danielle Powell
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Dr. Powell served as interim chair of PM&R when the COVID-19 pandemic began and provided leadership for the department to meet novel challenges in education and patient care. She also led an effort to change our residency program from an advanced to a categorical residency program, which brings us one step closer to becoming one of the premier residency training sites in the nation.

Chrystal Rutledge, M.D.
Associate Profession or Pediatrics, Division of Critical Care Pediatrics

Dr. Rutledge, member of African American Faculty Association, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics where she serves as the Co-Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Pediatric Residency Program and the Associate Medical Director of the Pediatric Simulation Center. In those roles, Dr. Rutledge has made sustained and significant contributions to the Department's and the School's efforts to foster a more diverse work environment and eliminate health disparities.

Chrystal’s Service, Teaching, & Research Activities

• This year, Dr. Rutledge co-led the development and implementation of virtual informational sessions for potential URiM residency applicants and post-interview question-and-answer sessions for URiM interviewees.
• Dr. Rutledge helps coordinate luncheons that allow the Meharry students to interact with resident, fellow, and faculty members of our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.
• Dr. Rutledge is the Director of the COACHES Program, a community outreach simulation program designed to provide educational training to community hospital staff on pediatric emergencies.

Marisa Marques, M.D.
Professor and Interim Director of the Laboratory Medicine Division in the Department of Pathology

Dr. Marques, co-chair of Hispanic/Latinx Faculty Association, has been at UAB since 1994 when she joined the Department of Pathology residency program in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and completed a fellowship in Hematopathology here. She was appointed to faculty in 1998 and since that time has moved through the ranks until her last appointment to Professor in October 2008. Dr. Marques’ leadership roles in the Department of Pathology include Associate Director of Laboratory Medicine Division, Section Head of Transfusion Medicine, Director of the Transfusion Medicine/Blood Bank Fellowship, Chair of the Blood Utilization and Management Committee, Medical Director of UAB Highlands Blood Bank, and Medical Director of Transfusion Services and the Apheresis Collection Facility at University of Alabama Hospital.

Marisa’s Service, Teaching, and Research Activities

• Dr. Marques is well known for her efforts in promoting the retention and advancement of tenure-track minorities by writing letters of support for promotion and tenure and devoting large portions of time for career advice.
• As President of the UAB Chapter of AMWA for the last 1.5 years, she has organized many meetings for women in medicine to improve networking and increase the awareness of barriers to their advancement in academic medicine as well as how to overcome them.
• Dr. Marques contributed to the creation of the Diversity Task Force for her Department. This task force tackles important inclusion topics such as race/language, sexual orientation, religion, and academic degrees.

Junior Faculty

Carlie Stein Somerville, M.D.

Carlie Stein Somerville, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Medicine's Division of General Internal Medicine, is the junior faculty winner of the Dean's Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Dr. Somerville received her doctorate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2013. She completed her Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency and served as chief resident in 2018.

As the UAB Med-Peds Program Director, Somerville implemented a holistic review of applicants, increasing the program's Underrepresented in Medicine (URiM) recruitment from 0 percent of residents to 25 percent of residents in two years. She created structured support, sponsorships, and paired mentorships for URiM residents. Somerville implemented a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curriculum, including panels for patients and healthcare workers to share experiences with racism, macroaggressions, and LGBTQIA+ care.

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Senior Faculty

Erica M. Stringer-Reasor, M.D.

Erica Stringer-Reasor, M.D., associate professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology, is the senior faculty winner of the Dean's Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

After completing a degree in biomedical sciences from Auburn University, Dr. Stringer-Reasor completed an internal medicine internship at Tulane University and an internal medicine residency at Baptist Health System in Birmingham before receiving her board certification. Following certification, she completed two fellowships at the University of Chicago, one in Hematology/Oncology and another in Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics.

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Junior Faculty

KeAndrea Titer, M.D.

KeAndrea Titer, M.D., assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and clinician for the Hospital Medicine Service, has been awarded the junior faculty 2022 Dean’s Excellence Award for Diversity Enhancement.

Titer cultivates diversity in academic medicine locally, nationally, and globally. She serves as a superb role model for UAB medical students in didactic and clinical settings, and she advises junior faculty in a UAB peer-mentoring program.

Since joining UAB faculty in 2019, Titer has co-developed a formal curriculum to address microaggressions against resident trainees entitled “Supporting Trainees by Addressing Microaggressions by Patients (STAMP).”

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Senior Faculty

Morissa Ladinaky, M.D.

Morissa Ladinsky, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, has been awarded the senior faculty 2022 Dean’s Excellence Award for Diversity Enhancement.

Ladinsky earned her medical degree and completed her pediatric residency training at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She then worked as a general pediatrician before completing training in a general academic pediatrics and program development fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. Prior to joining UAB in 2015, Ladinsky worked in the Division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

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Junior Faculty

Samantha Hill, M.D., MPH

Hill earned her M.D. from Morehouse School of Medicine in 2013 and completed her pediatric residency at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in 2016. She joined UAB in 2016 for her adolescent medicine fellowship and stayed on as faculty after completing her fellowship in 2019.

During her time at UAB, Hill has worked to find a way to help youth who are at high risk of acquiring HIV and those youth who are living with HIV. The HIV epidemic disproportionately impacts youth of color and Hill has focused on providing care for this vulnerable population through the use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). What began as her fellowship clinical quality improvement project, has transitioned into the city’s first PrEP clinic exclusively caring for adolescents and young adults.

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Senior Faculty

Seth Landefeld, M.D.

In his eight years at UAB, Landefeld has demonstrated extraordinary energy, leadership, and persistence in enhancing diversity in the department—through its residency training program, its compensation structure, and its culture.

Landefeld’s foundational efforts in the Tinsley Harrison Internal Medicine Residency Training Program began by rekindling a relationship with the program’s first Black/African American chief medical resident Carl E. Dukes, M.D. The connection with this alumnus yielded an endowment that provides critical resources for URIM pipeline recruitment activities as well as financial support for a Director of Diversity and Inclusion in the program. The first two such directors—Latesha Elopre, M.D., MSPH, and Karla Williams, M.D.—both received the Dean’s Excellence Award for Diversity Enhancement as Junior Faculty for their transformative work.

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Junior Faculty

Karla Williams, M.D.

 Karla Williams, M.D., is the junior faculty winner of the 2020 Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity. Williams is an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Hospital Medicine and the director of Diversity and Inclusion for the Internal Medicine Residency Program.

Williams exemplifies passion for advancing diversity and inclusion in academic medicine. As a resident she led the Diversity Enrichment Program with the goal to create a more inclusive learning environment for underrepresented trainees. In that role, she created a recruitment video and cultivated relationships with Morehouse School of Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine, and Meharry Medical College. These relationships have become a critical factor in our growing success in attracting outstanding young physicians of color to the program. Williams has worked with colleagues to develop a formal curriculum to address microaggressions in the medical environment. Supporting Trainees by Addressing Microaggressions by Patients (STAMP) has opened the door to have safe and honest discussions about racial and gender derogations in the medical environment.

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Senior Faculty

Farah Lubin, Ph.D.

Farah D. Lubin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology, is the senior faculty winner of the 2020 Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Lubin received a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Immunology from Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships in Molecular Neuroscience—the first at Baylor College of Medicine and the second at UAB in the Department of Neurobiology. Lubin joined the faculty at UAB with a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIMH). She is co-director of the NIH/NINDS Neuroscience Roadmap Scholar (RMS) Program for graduate students at UAB, and co-director of the NIH/NIGMS Mentored Experiences in Research, Instruction, and Teaching (MERIT) Program for postdoctoral fellows at UAB. She serves on the UAB GBS Neuroscience theme admissions committee and Medical Scientist training program (MSTP) advisory board. Lubin holds several appointments in the Civitan International Research Center, Comprehensive Neuroscience Center, Integrative Center for Aging Research, Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and Nathan Shock Center, while also holding several associate scientist and associate professor appointments throughout the School of Medicine. Additionally, she continues to serve on NIH study sections and on editorial boards for various scientific journals. Lubin’s work is currently funded by grants from the NIH, the Epilepsy Foundation, and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute.

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Herb Chen, M.D.

Isabel Scarinci, Ph.D., MPH

View all 2019 winners

Junior Faculty

Jaime McKinney, M.D.

 Senior Faculty

Monica Baskin, Ph.D.

View all 2018 winners

Junior Faculty

Nicole Jones, M.D.

 Nicole Jones, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics’ Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, is the junior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Since joining faculty five years ago, Jones has shown her passion for working to improve cultural sensitivity, diversity and inclusion in the department and in the Pediatric Residency Program. She’s served as a faculty advisor for the residency program’s Council on Diversity since 2013, providing guidance, advocacy and mentorship to residents. She’s also been working for greater diversity in the residency program by serving on the recruitment committee and hosting applicants for the UAB URM Diversity Weekend.

Jones has also been a guest speaker at the UAB Minority Association of Pre-Med Students and participates as a speaker and simulation facilitator with the School of Medicine’s Pre­matriculation in Medical Education (PRIME) and Summer Health Enrichment Program (SHEP) initiatives, which offer medical shadowing and development experiences to undergraduate students from underserved or underrepresented backgrounds.

“I have had the privilege of getting to know Dr. Jones both as a colleague in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and as a friend. She is a wonderful role model for our Pediatric residents,” said Michele Nichols, M.D., professor in the Department of Pediatrics who nominated Jones for the honor. “She is an excellent clinician, a wonderful teacher, and a strong representative of what women can be.”

 Senior Faculty

Raegan Durant, M.D., MPH

Raegan Durant, M.D., MPH, associate professor in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Preventive Medicine, is the senior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

“Dr. Durant has exhibited an unfailing adherence to the idea that diversity enhancement efforts should include the equitable allocation of our academic resources to all groups. With that in mind, he has channeled his energies in a multi-faceted manner to increase access of minority groups to both the research and clinical spheres in academia,” said Mona Fouad, M.D., MPH, director of the Division of Preventive Medicine.

Since joining the faculty in 2006, he has led numerous research projects at UAB to examine factors that contribute to minority underrepresentation in clinical research, focusing on developing programmatic interventions aimed at helping both potential minority study participants as well as health care and research personnel engaging in study recruitment. He is the principal investigator on a five-site consortium study to explore the use of patient navigation to increase minority participation in cancer clinical trials, and is building on the that work to examine minority participation in oncology personalized medicine studies to ensure that this burgeoning area of scientific discovery yields benefits that are applicable to all groups.

Durant is also medical director at Cooper Green Mercy Health Services, a role that charges him with ensuring access of this population to high-quality health care both at Cooper Green and its local institutional partners such as UAB.

“His dedication to this effort reflects his strong desire to ensure that diversity is reflected not only among the professional workforce, but also among the patients receiving health care,” Fouad said.

He has also demonstrated the value of diversity in teaching and mentorship, serving as a clinical research mentor for minority students and trainees, as well as for multiple students in undergraduate research programs. As part of the Disparities Curriculum Planning Committee, Durant worked with colleagues to create the didactic curriculum for the Health Disparities Track for the UAB Tinsley Harrison Internal Medicine Residency Program, and gives a bi-monthly lecture to interns on the impact of environmental factors contributing to health disparities.

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Junior Faculty

Latesha Elopre, M.D.

 Latesha Elopre, M.D., instructor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, is a junior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Elopre joined UAB in 2009 to complete her residency in internal medicine after earning her medical degree at the University of Florida College of Medicine. She’s a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and holds the newly established role as director of diversity and inclusion for the Tinsley Harrison Internal Medicine Residency Program, in which she’s developed and implemented strategies to enhance inclusion of trainees from diverse backgrounds and interests.

“Her enthusiasm, commitment and dedication to improving diversity and inclusion at UAB will not only make UAB a better institution, but will improve the health and wellness of our diverse patient population,” said Lisa L. Willett, M.D., professor of Medicine and director of the Tinsley Harrison Internal Medicine Residency Program. “She embodies all the attributes of an excellent role model and leader for our School of Medicine.”

 Senior Faculty

David E. Briles, Ph.D.

David E. Briles, Ph.D., professor of Microbiology, is a senior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Since he joined the faculty in 1978, more than 75 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, undergraduates, high school students, visiting scientists and research technicians have been a part of Briles’ laboratory group. More than 25 percent of these individuals were from underrepresented minorities, more than 30 percent were from non-United States backgrounds and approximately half were women.

Janet Yother, Ph.D. and Peter D. Burrows, Ph.D., professors in the Department of Microbiology who nominated Briles for the award, said his consistent efforts to make his lab a welcome environment for individuals of all backgrounds epitomize the commitment that has helped UAB become one of the most diverse universities in the country.

“Dr. Briles actively sought to bring graduate students and other trainees from underrepresented minorities into his laboratory. Few people can appreciate now what an important step that was,” they said. “The welcoming and nurturing atmosphere that he provided attracted more trainees from diverse backgrounds into his group and, perhaps more importantly, into many other laboratories and departments, who learned by example from Dr. Briles.”

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Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., MPH

Lee I. Ascherman, M.D., MPH, professor and director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology, is a senior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.

Ascherman joined the UAB faculty in 1993 to develop the UAB residency in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Since his arrival, Ascherman has intentionally encouraged a culture of diversity and inclusion within his division and community.

“Dr. Ascherman has striven to create a culture of tolerance and respect among staff, faculty and residents, as well as towards all patients,” said James Cullinan, D.O, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology, who nominated Ascherman for the award. Cullinan said Ascherman’s work has led the department and the residency program to represent a cross-section of race, ethnicity and religion. He has also been involved with early planning of the department’s LGBTQ-focused patient clinic that’s expected to open later this summer.

Ascherman’s efforts were acknowledged when the division was recognized with the UAB President’s Diversity Award in 2011 for his exemplary track record of recruiting, training and retaining one of the most ethnically and racially diverse groups in the entire university.

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