University of Illinois College of Medicine Holds 2026 Alumni Awards Ceremony
About the Awards
Each year, the University of Illinois College of Medicine honors select alumni for outstanding contributions in their fields. This year's award winners range from recipients who have made groundbreaking strides in heart and lung transplants, to those deeply involved in community service and health equity, to those guiding the country's health data mechanisms and reporting.
Thomas A. Cornwell, MD ’86– Alumni Humanitarian Alumni Award
This award honors alumni who embody an ongoing commitment to providing healthcare to communities in need and the underserved, or whose extraordinary service has contributed to the good of humankind.
Dr. Tom Cornwell has dedicated more than 30 years to caring for society’s most vulnerable patients. His compassion, personal sacrifice and leadership have transformed countless lives while helping restore home-based primary care across the United States and internationally. The humanitarian values that defined Dr. Cornwell’s career were recognized early. He received the William J. Grove Outstanding Medical Graduate Award in 1986, honoring the graduate who best exemplifies academic excellence, leadership, service and commitment to the medical community. Early in his career, he volunteered weekly at a Federally Qualified Health Center on Chicago’s West Side, caring for uninsured patients and later served as its medical director. Dr. Cornwell’s humanitarian impact is reflected in more than three decades of service to vulnerable patients. He has personally made more than 35,000 house calls to over 4,000 homebound patients and founded Northwestern Central DuPage Hospital’s home-based primary care program, which has provided more than 140,000 house calls to over 10,000 patients. Recognizing that many patients face needs beyond medical care, he established a $300,000 patient assistance fund providing food, medications, air conditioners, medical equipment and other emergency necessities. His commitment to expanding access to compassionate care led him to found the Home Centered Care Institute, through which he created 12 house call programs nationally and now supports more than 60 home-based primary care programs. His vision has also extended internationally. In 2018, he pioneered home-based care education in China by teaching the nation’s first home-based primary care conference. Through five subsequent educational trips to nine provincial capitals, Dr. Cornwell helped launch the country’s first organized efforts to develop homebased primary care, home health and hospice services for vulnerable older adults. By caring for patients in their homes, Dr. Cornwell witnessed poverty, food insecurity, unsafe housing and social isolation firsthand. He responded not only as a physician but as a humanitarian, addressing medical, emotional and practical needs with dignity, compassion and respect. His service has been recognized nationally with the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Award from the American Geriatrics Society and recognition in the Congressional Record for advancing care for America’s homebound population.
Nikita Vashi Baclig, MD ’16, MPH ’16, PhD – Alumni Early Achievement Award
This award honors alumni who graduated within the last 20 years and have excelled in their careers, making significant contributions to public health through clinical care, medical science, research, humanitarianism, or administrative activities.
Dr. Nikita Baclig is a physician-scientist, health services researcher and clinical instructor in Genitourinary Medical Oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersection of cancer and aging, survivorship and supportive care, with particular emphasis on how cancer and its treatments influence aging trajectories, frailty, quality of life and treatment burden among patients with genitourinary malignancies including bladder and kidney cancers. Dr. Baclig earned her Doctor of Medicine from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 2016 and completed a concurrent Master of Public Health in Health Policy. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center, where she served as Chief Resident for Quality and Safety at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. She subsequently completed fellowship training in hematology and oncology at UCLA while earning a PhD in Public Health through the UCLA Specialty Training in Advanced Research (STAR) Program. Her research integrates epidemiology, health services research, implementation science, qualitative methods, clinical trials and large-scale data analysis to examine how social, biologic and treatment-related factors affect patient wellbeing across the cancer continuum. During her doctoral training, she investigated psychosocial outcomes among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors, oncofertility, reproductive health policy and survivorship following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Her work demonstrating persistent depression and anxiety among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors earned a Conquer Cancer Merit Award. As her clinical focus evolved toward genitourinary oncology, Dr. Baclig expanded her research to explore the financial and time burdens associated with modern cancer therapies and the impact of treatment on functional outcomes in older adults. She recently received pilot funding through an I-REACH grant to study how treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer influences frailty and aging trajectories. Dr. Baclig has authored 15 peer-reviewed publications including five as first author and is recognized as an emerging leader in cancer survivorship and aging research. Her long-term goal is to establish an independent research program that identifies factors driving accelerated aging in cancer populations and develops patient-centered interventions that preserve function, improve quality of life and enhance cancer care for older adults.
Monika Pitzele, MD ’06, R ’09, PhD – Alumni Early Achievement Award
This award honors alumni who graduated within the last 20 years and have excelled in their careers, making significant contributions to public health through clinical care, medical science, research, humanitarianism, or administrative activities.
Dr. Monika Pitzele earned her PhD from Northwestern University and her MD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where she also completed her emergency medicine residency. She began her career at a busy urban Level I Trauma Center serving one of Chicago’s most underserved populations. She is currently an emergency physician and core faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rush University Medical Center, where she also serves as medical director of the Sexual Assault Program. Dr. Pitzele is a co-investigator on a major grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration supporting the training of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) throughout the Chicagoland area. She organizes SANE training and brings together physicians, nurses, law enforcement, prosecutors and advocates to improve care in this critical area. She regularly teaches emergency medicine residents about forensic emergency medicine and serves as course director for a fourth-year medical student elective focused on the care of sexual assault survivors. She has also been involved in educating paramedics on these topics. Dr. Pitzele has a longstanding interest in forensic emergency medicine with a focus on the care of vulnerable patients including survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, child and elder abuse, human trafficking and other forms of violence. She currently serves as chair of the Forensic Section of the American College of Emergency Physicians. In this role, she contributes to educational initiatives through webinars, newsletter articles and book chapters and has presented nationally on forensic emergency medicine. Dr. Pitzele has also been deeply involved in advocacy. She is a board member of the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians (ICEP) and served for six years as the emergency physician representative on the Illinois Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Services Implementation Task Force established by the Illinois Office of the Attorney General to oversee implementation of the Sexual Assault Emergency Treatment Act (SASETA). She helped lead legislative efforts to expand compensation for medical forensic examinations, strengthen privacy protections for survivors and extend follow-up care benefits. More recently, she has advocated for legislation addressing violence against healthcare workers, contributing to the passage of SB 2713, signed into law in June 2026.
Joshua J. Jacobs, MD ’81, R ’83 – Distinguished Alumni Award
This award recognizes alumni whose professional achievements and cumulative contributions have brought personal distinction, enhanced the general health and well-being of the public through professional practice, research or public policy, and brought honor to their medical alma mater.
Dr. Josh Jacobs received a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University and a Doctor of Medicine with Honors from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Following medical school, Dr. Jacobs completed two years in the University of Illinois/Cook County Hospital Combined Program in surgery before his residency in orthopaedic surgery at the Combined Harvard Orthopaedic Residency Program in Boston. During his residency, he served as a research fellow in the H.H. Uhlig Corrosion Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also served as chief resident in orthopaedic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a fellowship in adult reconstructive orthopaedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Jacobs has remained at Rush since completing his fellowship and served as the William A. Hark, M.D./Susanne G. Swift Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery for 16 years. He also served as vice provost for research at Rush University and vice dean for research at Rush Medical College. He currently is the Grainger Director of the Rush Arthritis and Orthopaedics Institute. Dr. Jacobs has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, with an h-index of 119 and more than 44,000 citations. His research focuses primarily on the biological and clinical consequences of material degradation from joint replacement implants. He has maintained continuous NIH funding for more than 30 years and is a multiple principal investigator on the University of Chicago/Rush University Clinical and Translational Science Award from NCATS/NIH. His research and leadership have been recognized with numerous honors including the Otto Aufranc Award, Ann Doner Vaughan Kappa Delta Award, Mark Coventry Award, ORS/OREF Distinguished Investigator Award, William W. Tipton, Jr. MD Leadership Award, Nicolas Andry Lifetime Achievement Award and Distinguished Contribution to Orthopaedics Award. Dr. Jacobs is a past president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Orthopaedic Research Society, Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation, United States Bone and Joint Decade/Initiative and The Hip Society. He also served as a director and vice president of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery and as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
David A. Talan, MD ’81 – Distinguished Alumni Award
This award recognizes alumni whose professional achievements and cumulative contributions have brought personal distinction, enhanced the general health and well-being of the public through professional practice, research or public policy, and brought honor to their medical alma mater.
Dr. David Talan received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He completed his residencies in internal and emergency medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and its associated medical centers. He is board certified in internal medicine, emergency medicine and infectious diseases. He is professor of emergency medicine and medicine/infectious diseases in residence (emeritus) at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. From 1993 to 2014, Dr. Talan was chair of the Olive View-UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine. He is currently faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Dr. Talan serves on the editorial board of the Annals of Emergency Medicine and is a reviewer for many journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. Dr. Talan is considered an authority in the area of acute infections that result in severe morbidity and death. His research focuses on emergency department-based surveillance and epidemiological research of emerging infections and clinical investigations of acute infectious diseases. Dr. Talan was the first formally trained and board-certified specialist in emergency medicine and infectious diseases. Throughout his career, he has advanced patient care at this intersection through the use of emergency departments (EDs) to improve surveillance and conduct clinical research of novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. He has directed many multicenter ED-based surveillance projects and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In 1995, he established EMERGEncy ID NET, an ED-based sentinel network for research of emerging infections in the United States funded by the CDC. This collaborative network of emergency and public health researchers has been funded for 28 years and has made many important observations including the seminal report on the emergence of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (N Engl J Med 2006). He has led multicenter ED-based RCTs including trials demonstrating the efficacy of short-course antibiotic treatment for acute pyelonephritis (JAMA 2000), efficacy of adjunctive antibiotics for surgically drained skin abscesses (N Engl J Med 2016) and the largest trial to date of nonoperative treatment of appendicitis (N Engl J Med 2020). Recently, he directed a multicenter ED surveillance project that determined the attributable risk of ED healthcare personnel contracting COVID-19 through direct patient care during 2020 (PLoS One 2022) and contributed to one of the first post-pharma COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness studies (N Engl J Med 2021). Dr. Talan has been invited to lecture nationally and internationally on infectious disease emergencies and emergency department surveillance and research.
Jose G. Trevino, BS ’97, MD ’01, R ’08, FACS – Distinguished Alumni Award
This award recognizes alumni whose professional achievements and cumulative contributions have brought personal distinction, enhanced the general health and well-being of the public through professional practice, research or public policy, and brought honor to their medical alma mater.
Dr. Jose Trevino earned his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 2001 and completed his general surgery residency and postdoctoral research training at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He subsequently completed fellowship training in surgical oncology and a second postdoctoral research fellowship at Moffitt Cancer Center, where he continued his research in tumor biology with a focus on pancreatic cancer. Dr. Trevino joined the University of Florida–Gainesville in 2011, where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure and held appointments in cancer biology, physiology and pharmacology and surgery. In 2022, he joined Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where he was granted tenure. He currently serves as chair of the Division of Surgical Oncology, interim chief of Gynecologic Oncology, surgeon-in-chief of Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Pancreas Program. He also holds the Geoffrey R. Shudtz Chair in Pancreatic Cancer Research and Walter Lawrence Jr., MD Endowed Chair in Oncology. His research focuses on pancreatic tumor biology, tumor-microenvironment interactions, cancer cachexia, cancer-stromal cell signaling and cancer health disparities. Dr. Trevino has published more than 170 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has maintained continuous research funding since 2011, including National Cancer Institute/NIH support as principal investigator. He also leads collaborative team-science initiatives and serves on the NIH/NCI Advanced Therapeutics A Study Section. As a clinician, Dr. Trevino is nationally and internationally recognized for his expertise in pancreatic disease and surgical oncology. He has delivered more than 100 invited grand rounds and research presentations and serves on numerous editorial boards and as an associate editor of the Journal of Surgical Research. A passionate educator and mentor, Dr. Trevino has mentored students, trainees and faculty across disciplines and has received multiple teaching and mentoring honors. His career reflects exceptional leadership in clinical care, cancer research, education and the advancement of the next generation of cancer investigators.