Surgeons, trainees, and others were honored with special awards presented during Clinical Congress 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. They include:
Distinguished Service Award
Marshall Z. Schwartz, MD, FACS (Winston-Salem, NC)
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum Award
John L. Cameron, MD, FACS (Baltimore, MD)
Mary Edwards Walker Inspiring Women in Surgery Award
Anna Marie Ledgerwood, MD, FACS (Detroit, MI)
Distinguished Philanthropist of the Year Award
Lorrie Langdale, MD, FACS (Seattle, WA)
ACS/Pfizer Surgical Volunteerism and Humanitarian Awards
- Academic Global Surgeon Award: Linda P. Zhang, MD, FACS (New York, NY)
- Surgical Humanitarian Award: William Rhodes, MD, FACS (Kapsowar, Kenya)
- International Surgical Volunteerism Award: Ziad C. Sifri, MD, FACS (Newark, NJ)
- Domestic Surgical Volunteerism Award: Thomas Romo III, MD, FACS (New York, NY)
- Military Surgical Volunteerism Award: Tamara J. Worlton, MD, FACS, FASMBS (Bethesda, MD)
- Resident Surgical Volunteerism Award: Nathan Brand, MD (San Francisco, CA)
RAS-ACS Outstanding Mentor of the Year Award
Edith Tzeng, MD, FACS (Pittsburgh, PA)
Jameson L. Chassin Award for Professionalism in General Surgery
Callie Hlavin, MD, MPH (Pittsburgh, PA)
Resident Award for Exemplary Teaching
Julie M. Clanahan, MD, MHPE (St. Louis, MO)
Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson II Promising Investigator Award
Tasce Bongiovanni, MD, MPP, MHS, FACS (San Francisco, CA)
History of Surgery Poster Competition
- First Place: Maxime Visa and Andre Sobocinski, MLS (Chicago, IL and Falls Church, VA): “Bulkheads on Battlefields: US Navy Medical Units Aboard Landing Ship Tanks at Normandy”
- Second Place: Tamara Almada, MD, FACS (Buenos Aires, Argentina): “Beyond the Scalpel: The First Filmed Surgery and The Global Birth of Medical Cinema, 1899”
CoC State Chair Outstanding Performance Award
John M. Lyons III, MD, FACS, FSSO (Baton Rouge, LA)
CoC Cancer Research Paper Competition
Basic Science
First place: Shravan Leonard-Murali, MD (Pittsburgh, PA): “Prospective Histology and Mutation Agnostic Assessment of Systemic Tumor Burden with Plasma Cell-Free DNA Concentration in 1000 Cancer Patients”
Clinical Research
- First place: Jaspinder Sing Sanghera, MBChB, iBSc (Birmingham, AL): “Impact of Fragmentation on Timely Receipt of Guideline-Concordant Treatment in Foregut Cancer”
- Second place: Jennifer H. Chen, MD (Houston, TX): “Prognostic Value of Circulating Tumor Cell Dynamics in Melanoma”
- Third place: Chris Varghese, MBChB (Rochester, MN): “Predicting Treatment Response After Total Neoadjuvant Therapy for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer”
Medical Student Program Poster Awards
Basic Science
- First place: Adam Boukind (St. Louis, MO): “Bioengineered Composite Promotes Neovascularization and Functional Recovery in Hindlimb Ischemia”
- Second place: Ryan Luedtke (Kalamazoo, MI): “Autologous Blood Clots Improve Healing and Angiogenesis Following Thermal Burns in a Rat Model”
Clinical Science
- First place: Rimla Khan (Colton, CA): “Evaluating Concomitant Procedures and Clinical Predictors of Peritoneal Dialysis Catheter Failure”
- Second place: James Burns (Boca Raton, FL): “Survival Outcomes Following Local Excision Compared to Abdominoperineal Resection After Chemoradiotherapy for Anal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: An NCDB Propensity Score-Matched Analysis”
Education, Innovation, or Outcomes
- First place: Michael Rallo (New Brunswick, NJ): “Undervalued: Disparities in Medicaid Reimbursement for Acute Care Surgery Services in the United States”
- Second place: Meghana Akula (Washington, DC): “National Outcomes and Management Trends of Severe Liver Trauma”
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum ePosters of Exceptional Merit
- Francesco Celotto, MD (Vicenza, Italy): “A Machine Learning Model for Pathological Complete Response Prediction and Automated MRI Segmentation in a Rectal-Sparing Approach to Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer”
- Raymond Dunn, MD, FACS (Worcester, MA): “Continuous Versus Releasable Plating Systems for Sternal Closure: Evaluating Postoperative Outcomes and Complication Rates”
- Japnit Dham, MSc (Forest Hills, NY): “Efficacy and Safety of Rezum Water Vapor Thermal Ablation for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia in Large Prostates: A Multi-Center Retrospective Study”
- Victory Chang, MD (Montes de Oca, San Pedro, Costa Rica): “Evaluation and Initiative to Reduce Burnout in General Surgery Residents in a Latin American Country with Middle to High Resources: A Cross-Sectional Study”
- Riah Lee (Schaumburg, IL): “Identifying Risk Factors for Early Graft Failure in Living Donor Kidney Transplantation: A UNOS-Based Study”
- Manuel Castillo-Angeles, MD, MPH (Brookline, MA): “Loss of Independence Following Common General Surgery Procedures: Quality Benchmarking for Older Adults”
- Jason Zhang (Chicago, IL): “Payer Trends for Office-Based Plastic Surgery Visits from 2002-2022: A MEPS Analysis”
- Elizabeth Bacon, MPH (Ann Arbor, MI): “Social Determinants of Health and Financial Toxicity Post-Thyroidectomy: Identifying Patients ‘On That Edge’”
- Fatemah Akbarpoor (Dubai, UAE): “Use of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation in Traumatic Injuries with Respiratory Failure: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”
Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum Excellence in Research Awards
Bariatric/Foregut
Seung Hyeon Shim (Cleveland, OH): “Endoscopic Per-Oral Pyloromyotomy (POP/G-POEM) Versus Laparoscopic Gastric Electrical Stimulator (GES) for Gastroparesis: A Propensity-Matched Multicenter Trial”
Breast
Abbas Hassan, MD, PhD (Indianapolis, IN): “Long-Term Outcomes of Lymphedema After Immediate Lymphatic Reconstruction Following Axillary Lymph Node Dissection”
Colon and Rectal Surgery
Matthew Hill, MD (New York, NY): Risk of Metachronous Colorectal Cancer Following Segmental Colectomy or Extended Resection in Patients with Lynch Syndrome
Endocrine
Anjani, Turaga, MD (Jersey City, NJ): “MEN1 Knockout Tumoroid Model Reveals Functional and Transcriptomic Disruptions in Stem Cell-Derived Islets”
Ethics
Matthew Marraco (Orlando, FL): “Medical School Personal Statements: A Comparison Between AI-Generated and Human-Authored Essays”
General Surgery
William Head, MD (Columbus, OH): “Functional Recovery After Ventral Hernia Repair: Longitudinal Trends and the Limits of Improvement”
Geriatric/Palliative Care
Alexander Agathis, MD (New York, NY): “The New Modified 4-Factor Functional Frailty Index (mFF-4) in General Surgery: A Predictive and More Suitable Phenotype Tool”
Global Surgery and Humanitarian Outreach
Madhushree Zope, MD, MS (Birmingham, AL): “Novel Insights into Post-Operative Morbidity for Pediatric Surgical Patients in Malawi Using Telephone Follow-Up”
Health Services Research
Patrick Johnson, MD, MPH (Ann Arbor, MI): “Changes in Medical Debt Before and After Emergency General Surgery Admission”
Hepatobiliary and Pancreas
- Jennifer Cillis, MD (Duarte, CA): “Oncolytic Properties of the Chimeric Poxvirus HOV-2 in Cholangiocarcinoma Models”
- Liti Zhang, MD (Los Angeles, CA): “Surgical Outcomes After Pancreatectomy for Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors in Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 1 and Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome: A Large Multi-Institutional Cohort Study (Quick-Shot)”
Orthopaedic Surgery
Bill Young (Stanford, CA): “Does Traumatic Brain Injury Increase Opioid Utilization After Total Hip Arthroplasty?”
Neurosurgery
Ruju Talati (Aurora, IL): “Novel Biomarker in Perilesional Cerebral Fluid During Breast and Lung Brain Metastasis Resection”
Pediatric Surgery
Jessica Wright, MD (McDonald, TN): “Surgical Murine Model of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia”
Plastic/Maxillofacial Surgery
Shahnur Ahmed, MD (Indianapolis, IN): “Prophylactic Buried Dermal Flap with Immediate Lymphatic Reconstruction: Effect on Functional Outcomes Following Axillary Lymph Node Dissection”
Surgical Education
Rachael Acker, MD (Philadelphia, PA): “Belonging in Surgical Residency: A Nationwide Cohort Study”
Surgical Oncology
- Aparna Vancheswaran, MD (New York, NY): “B Cell Depletion Augments Talimogene Laherparepvec (T-VEC) Reversal of Anti-PD1 Resistance”
- Peter Bryant, MD (Nashville, TN): “Effects of Palliative Care in Patients Undergoing Major Abdominal Surgery for Cancer 6 Months After Surgery”
Thoracic Surgery
Aidan Aicher, MD (New Brunswick, NJ): “Induction of Immunogenic Cancer Cell Death via mRNA Lipid Nanoparticle Treatment”
Transplantation & Tissue Engineering
Marissa Di Napoli, MD (Shreveport, LA): “The Sex-Based Survival Disparity Persists in Liver Transplantation: Meld 3.0 Fails to Improve Upon the Disadvantage for Waitlisted Women”
Trauma/Burn/Critical Care
Janet Ashley, MD (Houston, TX): “Use of Extracellular Vesicles for Neuroinflammation and Response to Injury”
Urology
Max Yudovich, MD (Hershey, PA): “Can Artificial Intelligence Effectively Interpret Urologic Imaging Studies?”
Vascular Surgery
Mounika Naidu Boya, MD (Philadelphia, PA): “Objective Coagulation Assays for Predicting Thrombosis in Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD)”
