Awards and Honors
InFocus • Spring 2025 Issue • May 27, 2025
Below are some of the recent awards and honors received by our Penn Pathology and Laboratory Medicine community.
 The HUP Apheresis Therapy Treatment Team received the Press Ganey Pinnacle of Excellence Award for Outpatient Patient Experience for an incredible third year in a row. This prestigious honor recognizes select organizations that sustained top performance on patient experience measures over a three-year time period.
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Vijay Bhoj, MD, PhD is one of the inaugural recipients of the Lupus Research Alliance (LRA) Targeted Research Program on Engineered Cell Therapies for Lupus Preclinical Study Award. The program was established to support the development and mechanistic understanding of safe and accessible next-generation engineered cell therapies for people with lupus. Dr. Bhoj received a Pre-Clinical Study award as he seeks to develop a selective approach to CD19-targeted CAR T cell therapy that targets only age-associated B cells (ABCs), an autoreactive B cell population (that mistakenly recognizes the patient’s own body), potentially inducing lasting remission (decrease or absence of symptoms) with minimal side effects. |
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Martine Boggs, PA (ASCP), MBA, Technical Manager of the Surgical Pathology Gross Laboratories at HUP was named Runner Up for the 2025 CPUP Safety Star. The program was part of this year's Patient Safety Awareness Week. Anyone who submitted a near miss event (harm score A, B1, or B2) in safety net, under CPUP, was eligible for selection. |
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Pathologist Assistant Joseph DiRienzi, PA (ASCP) from HUP Medical Pathology, received a HUP Good Catch Award for March 2025. Good Catch Award recipients have reported an important patient safety event or concern. |
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Joie Edmonds, Laboratory Assistant at PPMC, was recently named one of March's "Presby Stars," a program that recognizes employee performance above and beyond Penn Medicine's Experience Standards for Professionalism. Joie showed tremendous teamwork by covering for several employees during the end-of-year holiday season. She also assisted Pathology administration with office tasks to keep the Department running. Joie was nominated by her manager, who said, "Joie worked to provide our department with the necessary help when it was not easy to do so. We appreciate her work, commitment and help for our department and our patients.” |
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Clinical Microbiology Fellow Erika M. Flores, PhD won one of three "Best Poster Travel" Awards at the recent Pan American Society for Clinical Virology annual meeting in Clearwater, FL. Erika presented her poster, "Implementation of Clinical Decision Support to Optimize Respiratory Pathogen Panel (RPP) Utilization at Penn Medicine." |
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Jino Ko, PhD received the 2025 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the foundation’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Dr. Ko was recognized for her expertise across bioengineering, molecular biology, and chemistry in developing transformative technologies for molecular diagnostics of diseases, especially with respect to how brain-related conditions are diagnosed and treated. |
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Priti Lal, MD was elected Treasurer of the Genitourinary Pathology Society (GUPS). GUPS is an official Companion Society of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) that aims to advance the care of patients with urologic diseases through improvements in the subspecialty of urological pathology by enhancing best practices, research and education.
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In recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, PhD has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lee will receive her award at at the NAS Year in Review Symposium in June. |
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Bruce L. Levine, PhD has received the 2025 Career Achievement Award in Cell & Gene Therapy from International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT). The ISCT Career Achievement Award was created in 2016 to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of cell and gene therapy, including to ISCT itself. |
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Warren S. Pear, MD, PhD is the inaugural recipient of the Institute for Immunology & Immune Health (I3H) Michael Cancro Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award. Dr. Pear is being recognized for his exceptional commitment to mentoring colleagues, fostering professional development, and creating an inclusive academic environment. The award is in honor of our beloved colleague Michael Cancro, who passed away in February 2025. Over his 49 years at Penn, Dr. Cancro made an indelible impact and exhibited a tremendous commitment to the next generation of scientists. In that spirit, the Cancro Award celebrates those who go beyond their formal responsibilities to guide others toward professional success. |
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Casey Steward, Technical Specialist in Point-of-Care Testing at PAH, was recognized as a Penn Medicine "Difference Maker" in April 2025. Casey regularly organizes seasonal activities and celebrations to help forge connections among her fellow lab personnel at PAH. Melissa Sims, a PAH Core Lab Technical Supervisor, says, “There are more smiles here, and Casey has a big part in that.” |
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Xiaowei (George) Xu, MD, PhD received the Established Investigator Award from the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA). This award supports senior investigators with an established record of scientific productivity and accomplishment and who are past the initial five years of their first academic faculty appointment. | |
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Eight physicians from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine were included in Philadelphia Magazine's "Top Doctors 2025:" Zubair Baloch, MD, PhD (HUP), Rossitza A. Draganova-Tacheva, MD (CCH), David E. Elder, MBChB (HUP), Franz Fogt, MD, PhD (PAH), Zissimos Mourelatos, MD (HUP), Xiawoei (George) Xu, MD, PhD (HUP), Gordon Yu, MD (HUP), and Paul J. Zhang, MD (HUP). | |
