Medical alumni return for reunion, set to honor three notable alumni, award scholarships
Upstate Medical University’s Alan and Marlene Norton College of Medicine will welcome nearly 300 alumni and guests to campus for its 2024 Medical Reunion Sept. 20 and 21.
Alumni from the classes of 1954, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 will participate in tours, seminars, luncheons and class dinners, as well as hear reports from Upstate President Mantosh Dewan, MD, Norton College of Medicine Dean Lawrence Chin, MD, and Upstate University Hospital CEO Robert Corona, DO, MBA
“Upstate’s Norton College of Medicine Reunion is a way to reconnect with friends and classmates and to see the significant changes that have taken place on campus,” said Paul Norcross, executive director of the Medical Alumni Foundation. “It’s also an opportunity for Upstate to thank our alumni for their ongoing support throughout the year for the college and its students.”
One of the highlights of the activities is the awarding of nearly $900,000 in scholarships. In addition, alumni philanthropy supports students with white coats, textbooks, reference guides and the Career Advisory Network. Reunion events will also include a writing seminar, historical exhibit highlighting the archives of Upstate’s Health Sciences Library and tours of the Nappi Wellness Institute that opened last year.
A feature of the reunion is the presentation of three alumni honors: The Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award and the Humanitarian Award.
Mary Fallat, MD, Class of 1979, will receive the Distinguished Alumna Award. Fallat, professor of surgery at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, is a pioneer in pediatric trauma care, committed to improving the care of injured children through system development, research, and advocacy locally, regionally, and nationally. She authored a strategic plan for a trauma services program that was ultimately approved and implemented, creating the first dedicated pediatric trauma center in the Kentucky, where she served as director of trauma services. For her work in this area of medicine, Fallat received the Pediatric Trauma Society Lifetime Achievement Award, given to professionals who have had the biggest impact on improving trauma care nationwide.
Fallat has served on the Committee on Bioethics for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and was the first surgeon to chair this national committee. She has written AAP position statements on pediatric professionalism, fertility preservation for children and adolescents who have cancer, and resuscitation strategies for terminally ill children who need surgery. Guidelines she developed have become standard, earning her recognition by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2022 with the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence, among other honors.
Kenar Dinesh Jhaveri, MD, Class of 2004, will receive the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award. Jhaveri is professor of medicine and associate chief in the Division of Kidney Diseases and Hypertension at Northwell Health and is a leader in onconephrology and glomerular kidney disease. Jhaveri is a founding member and past co-president of the American Society of Onconephrology and a founding member of the International Society of Glomerular Diseases. He serves as the editor-in-chief for the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) journal, ASN Kidney News. In 2021, he was honored with the National Kidney Foundation’s New York-Excellence in Care Award, and in 2023 received the American Society of Nephrology Distinguished Leader Award for his dedication to clinical research, leadership, and advancing the field of nephrology. In March 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jhaveri and his colleagues noticed a dramatic increase in patients with AKI. Nearly every COVID-19 patient who was intubated developed a kidney injury. “This was not normal,” he says. “We knew we had to let the world know.”
In the largest study to date, Jhaveri and a team of investigators at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research analyzed the electronic health records of 5,449 hospitalized COVID-19 patients between March 1, 2020, and April 5, 2020. They determined that 36.6 percent (1,993 patients) developed AKI, rates higher than reported in China. Their results were published in Kidney International.
Samuel Cady, MD Class of 1999, will receive the Humanitarian Award. Cady is a board-certified, fellowship-trained ophthalmologist who specializes in the diagnosis, management, and surgical treatment of glaucoma and cataracts at Maine Eye Center in Portland, Me. He has also used his expertise to restore sight to hundreds of people and train ophthalmic surgical techniques to physicians in under-resourced countries. Cady is a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the Maine Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons, where he served as president from 2012 to 2014. He is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and an assistant clinical professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. For the past 15 years, Cady has also been an affiliated ophthalmologist with Cure Blindness Project, a large NGO dedicated to eradicating blindness in under-resourced areas of the world by helping people regain and retain their sight
An annual tradition of reunion is the Weiskotten Lecture, which this year will be presented by Robert B. Cady, MD, Class or 1971, Emeritus Professor of Orthopedics and Pediatrics. Cady will speak on “From Elizabeth Blackwell and Sarah Loguen Fraser to Pat Numann and Ted Higgins,” highlighting Upstate’s role in women’s rights, civil rights, global health and more.
Caption: Honorees at this year's Norton College of Medicine Reunion are, from left, Mary Fallat, '79, Kenar Dinesh Jhaveri, MD, '04 and Samuel Cady, MD, '99