The University of Chicago Medical & Biological Sciences Alumni Association (UChicago MBSAA) honors the contributions of alumni of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine with its Alumni Awards.
The Alumni Service Award recognizes contributions alumni make through philanthropy and volunteer service to the University of Chicago. The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes the contributions alumni make to the fields of medicine and science. Both awards include a category to recognize early achievements in career and service by alumni who have graduated within the past 15 years.
Alumni Service Award:
Doriane C. Miller, MD’83
Inaugural Director
Center for Community Health and Vitality
The University of Chicago
A Chicago native, Dr. Miller is the inaugural director of the Center for Community Health and Vitality at the University of Chicago, whose mission is to improve population health outcomes for residents on the South Side of Chicago. Previously, she was national program director of New Health Partnerships, a demonstration project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Health Care Foundation.
Dr. Miller also served as program vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she led strategic planning and program design in clinical quality improvement. Programs developed under her direction included demonstration projects designed to improve quality of care for individuals with chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and depression. In 2006, the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology recognized Dr. Miller with a Special Recognition Award for her work in improving asthma outcomes through school and community interventions.
At UChicago, Dr. Miller served as president of the Alumni Council for the Medical & Biological Sciences Alumni Association. She currently serves as an internal advisor for the Leadership and Society Initiative.
Beyond UChicago, she has served as vice president of the Institute of Medicine–Chicago and held committee leadership positions with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the Association of Clinical and Translational Sciences. She now serves on the board of directors for the Preservation of Affordable Housing in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Miller has more than thirty years of experience as a community-based primary care provider working with under-resourced minority communities. She received her medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed her primary care internal medicine residency and a general medicine/clinical epidemiology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
Distinguished Alumni Award:
Richard M. Bergenstal, MD’76
Executive Director
International Diabetes Center at Park Nicollet
Dr. Bergenstal completed medical school, an internal medicine residency, and an endocrine fellowship at the University of Chicago, and was a member of our endocrinology faculty until 1983. At UChicago, he helped lead the KROC Study, the first randomized controlled trial demonstrating the feasibility of achieving improved glucose control with new insulin delivery technology in people with type 1 diabetes (T1D). This study informed the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT).
Dr. Bergenstal joined the International Diabetes Center (IDC) in 1983, at the start of IDC’s participation in the DCCT. Over 10 years, the DCCT showed that an intensive therapy aimed at achieving near normal levels of glycemia could reduce long-term diabetes complications but also resulted in dangerous short-term hypoglycemia. He has followed DCCT participants for the past 43 years and served as a principal investigator on key NIH multicenter trials evaluating glucose control and management in type 2 diabetes, including ACCORD and GRADE.
Dr. Bergenstal’s main research goal over the past 30 years has been to show how team-based care, with a focus on utilizing information from new technologies, could help safely achieve optimal glucose control in real-world clinical practice.
In 2013, Dr. Bergenstal published the first consensus recommendations for how to visualize the data generated from continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in a one-page report called the ambulatory glucose profile (AGP). The AGP report is now incorporated in CGM device reports globally, to assist in diabetes management. He also published pivotal clinical trial data leading to the approval of the first automated insulin delivery technology, now considered standard of care for all individuals with T1D.
The recent focus of Dr. Bergenstal’s work has been to develop tools and educational strategies to help people with diabetes and clinicians personalize diabetes care in an effective, efficient, and equitable manner.
Dr Bergenstal’s achievements include receiving the Banting Medical for Service from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), serving as ADA President, Medicine and Science, being named ADA Outstanding Physician Clinician, and receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Diabetes Technology Society.
Anthony Letai, PhD’93, MD’95
Director
National Cancer Institute
Dr. Letai is the 18th director of the National Cancer Institute. Previously, he was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A leader in cancer biology and programmed cell death research, Dr. Letai has received the European Cell Death Organization Career Award, the Smith Family Prize for Outstanding Scientific Contributions, and a National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award.
His laboratory’s research provided important basic understanding of how BCL-2 family proteins interact to regulate apoptosis. Dr. Letai leveraged this understanding to play a key role in the preclinical and clinical advance of the BCL-2 antagonist venetoclax to regulatory approval for treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia and acute myelogenous leukemia. Recognized internationally as a founder of the field of functional precision medicine, he was a co-founder and president of the Society for Functional Precision Medicine from 2017 to 2025.
Dr. Letai’s research and clinical expertise focus on how programmed cell death pathways permit the selective killing of cancer cells. While his early work focused on blood cancers, the concepts have found wide application across oncology in both drug therapy and cellular immunotherapy. His work has led to more than 200 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, Cancer Cell, and Cancer Discovery.
Dr. Letai received an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University. At the University of Chicago, he earned a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology in the laboratory of Elaine Fuchs, PhD, as well as an MD. He completed an internal medicine internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, followed by a fellowship in hematology and oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he also undertook postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Stanley Korsmeyer, MD.
Arthur Reingold, AB’70, MD’76
Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology
University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Reingold joined the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service as a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service in 1979, serving until 1981. He then continued at the CDC as assistant branch chief until 1987, when he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health as professor of epidemiology, with a concurrent appointment as professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He was appointed head of the Division of Epidemiology at Berkeley in 1990, serving until 2025. He also held the Edward Penhoet Endowed Chair from 2009 to 2014, was named distinguished professor from 2024 to 2025, and became professor emeritus of epidemiology in 2025.
Since beginning his work at the CDC in 1979, Dr. Reingold has focused on the prevention and control of infectious diseases in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. His work has included pioneering studies of staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome, vaccine-preventable diseases, respiratory tract infections, and SARS-CoV-2. He has published more than 420 original research articles, many of which has informed vaccine policy and evaluation in the United States and in low-income countries.
Dr. Reingold has directed a CDC-funded emerging infections program in partnership with state and local health departments since 1994 and previously served as program director of an NIH Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program for 25 years, training researchers from around the world. A member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2003, he has served on major advisory bodies for the CDC, FDA, and WHO, including as deputy chair of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts and chair of the Western States COVID-19 Vaccine Scientific Safety Review Committee.
Dr. Reingold received an AB in 1970 and an MD in 1976 from the University of Chicago. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1978 and a residency in preventive medicine at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta in 1982.
Jonathan M. Rubin, MD’74, PhD’77
Professor Emeritus of Radiology
University of Michigan
Dr. Rubin is professor emeritus of radiology at the University of Michigan. He earned a BA in chemistry from the University of Utah and both an MD and a PhD in biophysics and theoretical biology from the University of Chicago. He completed his radiology residency at UChicago and joined the University of Michigan radiology faculty in 1984. Over the course of 30 years, he served as either co-director or director of ultrasound in the Department of Radiology. At the time of his retirement, he was the William Martel Collegiate Professor of Radiology.
Dr. Rubin has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and holds 16 patents. He has served as deputy editor for physics for Academic Radiology and as associate editor for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology and the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine. His honors include the Lawrence Mack Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound, the Joseph H. Holmes Clinical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, the Innovations Award from the University of Michigan Medical School, the University of Michigan Medical School Distinguished Alumni Award, and designation as a Distinguished Investigator in the Academy of Radiology Research. He has been principal investigator on multiple grants from industry and the NIH. In recognition of his impact, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan recently named a collegiate professorship in his honor.
Distinguished Alumni Award for Early Achievement:
Daniel R. Matute, PhD’11
Professor of Biology
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Matute, professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an evolutionary biologist who investigates the processes underlying the emergence of species, including those that pose threats to human health. He earned his BS in biology and microbiology from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and his PhD in ecology and evolution from the University of Chicago, where he trained under Jerry Coyne, PhD, and conducted pioneering work on the genetic basis of reproductive isolation in Drosophila species.
Dr. Matute’s research group investigates the genetic mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of reproductive isolation across diverse organisms. His work not only bridges classical evolutionary questions with modern genomic techniques but also employs broad taxonomic sampling to understand the consequences of gene exchange between species. The significance of Dr. Matute’s research lies in its synthesis of evolution, genetics, and global health. By elucidating the genetic basis of speciation and adaptation—both in model organisms and in human pathogens—this work provides a unifying framework for understanding how biological diversity originates and how it shapes ecosystems, populations, and disease dynamics.
Dr. Matute’s scholarship has been widely published in leading scientific journals, and he is recognized for both the depth and breadth of his contributions to evolutionary biology. His early promise was acknowledged with the 2014 Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, one of the field’s most prestigious honors for emerging scientists. In addition to his research, Dr. Matute is a dedicated mentor and active member of the evolutionary biology community, contributing to professional society leadership and graduate training.
