2020 Distinguished Alumni Award

Tara Allmen, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences 1986

Tara Allmen, MD, is a Board Certified Gynecologist, author of Menopause Confidential and one of America’s leading experts in midlife women’s health.  A member of the Class of 1986, Dr. Allmen has been a loyal supporter of Johns Hopkins University and a lead donor on her 30th reunion committee.

Reginald Bannerman, School of Nursing 1997, 2003

Reginald E. Bannerman, RN, MSN, MBA, NE-BC, hails from a family of lawyers and doctors, and as a young person, leaned toward a career in medicine. It wasn’t until he met his brother’s college roommate, who was a nurse, that he considered this noble profession. Reginald’s experience includes working with adults, teenagers, and children with eating disorders and other psychiatric ailments. His clients ranged from nine to 81 years old, and younger patients helped deepen a personal goal to address challenges early in life so that the patient could prevent a lifetime of struggles. This passion for helping those struggling with mental illness led Reginald to his current role as the Director of Nursing for the Child Psychiatry Unit at Children’s National Health System.  Reginald is a proud two-time Hopkins alumnus. He graduated from the School of Nursing in 1997 with his Bachelor’s degree, and then again in 2003 with his MBA and MSN degrees. Since graduating, Reginald has been an outstanding advocate and volunteer for the School of Nursing. Reginald finished two terms as Treasurer of the Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumni Association. He is currently a member of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Council and serves as the co-chair for the Students Grants Committee. Reginald has been an active alumnus and regularly comes back to the School of Nursing to meet with students and share his experience. He is a passionate nursing recruiter, strong advocate, and exemplary alumni leader.

Michael Becker, Whiting School of Engineering 1969      

Dr. Michael Becker is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds the William H. Hartwig Faculty Fellowship in Electrical Engineering.  He received his B.E.S. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1970 and 1974 respectively. He was named the William H. Hartwig fellow in Electrical Engineering in 1996. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and has received the Faculty Excellence Award from the Halliburton Education Foundation.  During his career, he supervised the successful completion of 24 Ph.D. and 34 M.S. degrees. He is also the author of over 100 papers and 60 conference proceedings, as well as the holder of 7 patents, and co-author of three books. Throughout his academic career, his teaching interests included optics, optical information processing, and capstone design project laboratory courses, including multidisciplinary projects courses. His research has focused on laser-induced damage to optical devices and materials, femtosecond laser excitation of solid-sate phase transition in VO2, nanomaterials production using Laster Ablation of a Micro-particle Aerosol (LAMA), and ultraprecise laser beam shaping. In addition to his exemplary career, he is a dedicated supporter of Johns Hopkins and the Whiting School of Engineering. He has contributed significantly to the Dean’s Leadership Fund, as well as documented a bequest for a named professorship with the Whiting School of Engineering He has also volunteered as a member of his 45th reunion committee.

L. Michael Brunt, School of Medicine 1980

L. Michael Brunt, M.D., Med ’80, is professor of surgery in the Department of Surgery’s Section of Minimally Invasive Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, and is a recognized leader and clinical expert in laparoscopic, endocrine, and hernia surgery.  Dr. Brunt was one of the first Washington University physicians to fully adopt laparoscopic surgery and is internationally recognized for his work in laparoscopic adrenalectomy. He is Team Surgeon for the St. Louis Blues, and has a nationwide referral practice for collegiate and professional athletes with sports hernias. He has been listed in Best Doctors in America from 1996 through 2008, and has been the referral surgeon for faculty, fellow surgeons, and their families.  A leader in the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons’ (SAGES) effort to educate surgeons worldwide in minimally invasive surgery, Brunt serves on the Board of Governors of SAGES and was program director for the 2009 annual meeting.  He has published more than 130 scientific articles, chapters, and movies, and is on the editorial board of Surgical Endoscopy. A gifted professor, Brunt was voted Clinical Teacher of the Year five times between 2000 and 2006. In 2002, he received the School of Medicine’s Samuel Goldstein Leadership Award in Medical Student Education, and has directed the Department of Surgery’s Annual Refresher Course in General Surgery for more than 15 years.  Dr. Brunt and his wife, Elizabeth M. Brunt, M.D., established the L. Michael and Elizabeth M. Brunt Endowed Scholarship to benefit medical students at Johns Hopkins.

Robert Carr, Bloomberg School of Public Health 1985, 1986       

Robert Carr, MD, MPH, FACPM is dedicated to training population-minded physicians, and is passionate about fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration toward the goal of improving the health of the patient through policy, practice, capability, and innovation. He began his career as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force Aerospace Medicine, and as part of the Surgeon General’s Office of Disease Surveillance & Health Promotion. He moved to his second career in public health with GlaxoSmithKline, where he worked for 25 years in leadership roles including HIV research and clinical diagnostics. Since his retirement from GSK in 2014, Carr has led and taught in an executive master’s program in health system administration at Georgetown University. He has most recently taken on the role as chief medical officer of Kumanu, a precision well-being technology company. Carr is also the immediate past president of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the professional society for physicians dedicated to preventive medicine and population health. This organization of more than 2,700 members from academia and government aims to promote preventive medicine in order to improve the health of individuals and communities.  Recently, Carr has expanded his consistent philanthropy to include the creation of the Carr Family Humanitarian Student Scholarship, which will support MPH students in perpetuity. Additionally, Carr has given back to the School through his service as a member of the Bloomberg School’s Health Advisory Board for five years and recently resumed his service to the board.

Duane J. Gubler, Bloomberg School of Public Health 1969         

Duane J. Gubler, ScD is Emeritus Professor and the founding Director of the Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is affiliated with the Duke University-Graduate Medical School in Singapore. He earned his ScD degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 1969 under the guidance of acclaimed professor Lloyd E. Rozeboom. Gubler spent his entire research career investigating mosquito-transmitted diseases, especially dengue/dengue hemorrhagic fever. He has extensive research experience in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, tropical America, and elsewhere in the world with more than 350 publications on both dengue and other vector-borne tropical diseases. Gubler served as Director of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, National Infectious Diseases Center for the CDC in Colorado for 15 years, and was founding Chief of the CDC’s Dengue Branch for nine years. He has served as a consultant/advisor on numerous WHO committees. He is Past president and Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America

Myint Htwe, Bloomberg School of Public Health 1992                  

Myint Htwe, MBBS, DrPH, MPH, is a public health professional with a long history of service in the health sector. In April 2016, he was appointed Union Minister of Health and Sports by the new Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in 2016. Htwe works to enable all of Myanmar’s citizens to enjoy longevity of life and to ensure all have the opportunity to live free from diseases. To accomplish this, Htwe oversees dissemination of health education, proliferation of disease prevention activities, and the provision of treatment of prevailing diseases.  Htwe has spent over 16 years with WHO, serving in a variety of roles in the South East Asia Regional Office, including Regional Advisor for Research and Policy Cooperation and Director for Programme Management. Before he joined WHO, he was at the Ministry of Health, where he served as Chief of the Health Systems Research Unit and Chief of the International Health Division of the Minister’s Office. Htwe is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Myanmar Academy for Medical Sciences. He has held a number of key positions including Chair of the Preventive and Social Medicine Society of the Myanmar Medical Association, and Chair of the Ethics Review Committee of the Department of Medical Research at the Ministry of Health.  In addition to his DrPH from JHSPH, Htwe has an MBBS and a Diploma in Preventive and Tropical Medicine from the Institute of Medicine (Myanmar) and an MPH from the University of the Philippines. He authored the book, Reflections of a Public Health Professional, for public health workers in developing countries.

Min-Ho Huang, Bloomberg School of Public Health 1996                        

A trained surgeon, Min-Ho Huang, MD, PhD, MPH, earned his MPH from JHSPH as part of the former Taiwan Health Elite Program. The School established the program in 1994 to prepare many of the government’s leaders to oversee changes to Taiwan’s health care delivery. In 2013, he created an endowment in the department of Health Policy & Management in memory of his late father. Currently, Huang is president of the Show Chwan Health Care System in Taiwan, which he established in 1973, and named to commemorate his father. Huang oversees the system’s eight hospitals, which serve their communities with a commitment to ethical and multi-generational care. It is modeled after the Mayo Clinic in the US. Huang also runs OmniHealth Group, a “total solution provider” in the sector of health care and medicine. OmniHealth Group has experience in practical management of medical institutions, along with close collaboration with domestic and foreign health care systems on the foundation of an online virtual environment. Huang is Chairman and Founder of the Asian Institute of TeleSurgery in Taiwan. The Institute mirrors IRCAD (Research Institute against Digestive Cancer), which pools digestive cancer research laboratories, a research and development department in computer sciences and robotics, and a training center in minimally invasive surgery. In 1986, Huang was elected as a congressman in Taiwan and served three terms. He is credited with the initiation of national health insurance, social welfare, and environmental protection policies. In 2011, he received the King Star Medal from the President of Taiwan.

Jon Lorsch, School of Medicine Faculty (former)  

Dr. Lorsch served on faculty at Johns Hopkins in the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry from 1999 to 2013, becoming a full professor in 2009.  As passionate about education as he is about research, he worked to reform the curricula for graduate and medical education, spearheading the development of the Center for Innovation in Graduate Biomedical Education, and launching a program offering summer research experiences to local high school students, many from groups that are underrepresented in the biomedical sciences. In addition, he advised dozens of undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Lorsch is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters and other papers. He has also been the editor of six volumes of Methods in Enzymology and has been a reviewer for numerous scientific journals. He is the author on two awarded U.S. patents. His honors include six teaching awards from Johns Hopkins.  Lorsch's other activities have included membership on the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology's mentoring committee, the RNA Society's board of directors and NIH review committees.  He became the Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in August 2013. In this position, Lorsch oversees the Institute's $2.9 billion budget, which supports basic research that increases understanding of biological processes, and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Additionally, he has several leadership roles, serving on the NIH Scientific Data Council, Administrative Data Council, and Extramural Activities Working Group, which he co-chairs.

Mary G. Lynch, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences 1976, School of Medicine 1980                                   

Dr. Mary Lynch is Professor of Ophthalmology at Emory University School of Medicine, former Chief of the Ophthalmology Section at the Atlanta Veterans Medical Center (1994-2010), Ophthalmology Consultant to the Southeast Veterans Integrated Service Network (2003-present), and Chair of the Ophthalmology Field Advisory Committee in VA Central Office.  Dr. Lynch received her undergraduate, medical, internship, residency, and fellowship training at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She has authored or co-authored over 100 original manuscripts, reviews, book chapters, or abstracts. Her research has focused on innovative ways of dealing with difficult problems in glaucoma. Dr. Lynch wrote the first paper describing central nervous system side effects from beta-blocker eye drops. As a result of this observation, she worked on the development of dropper tips that could produce smaller eye drops, and this work has been incorporated into current dropper tip design. She also wrote the first paper describing the surgical treatment of malignant glaucoma—the creation of unicameral eye. This is still the basic principle of malignant glaucoma treatment today.  Dr. Lynch wrote the first paper describing the 360-degree suture trabeculotomy for the treatment of congenital glaucoma. She expanded on this work to show that by treating 360 degrees of the angle in a single operation—instead of 90 degrees with a conventional goniotomy or rigid probe trabeculotomy—the success rate was much higher, and children had a greater chance of achieving normal vision. Along with her husband, Dr. Reay Brown, she developed the EyePass—a precursor to the iStent and the first MIGS device to be implanted in humans. As part of this project, she wrote the fundamental patents for several MIGS devices—including the iStent and Hydrus.

John Meduri, Carey Business School 1994, 2000

John Meduri is a leader in biotech and life sciences, as well as for the Carey Business School’s alumni population. Since then, John has devoted his life to helping the world develop better diagnostic solutions for patients. Early in his career, he founded a company that was acquired, and revolutionized the ability for hospitals to help communicate the spread of diseases globally. He spent a large portion of his corporate career as Head of Business Development at BD, one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world. . He recently took on the role of Executive VP, Head of Business Development, Global Marketing & Strategy at Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc.  A leader at the Carey Business School, John has served on the Dean’s Alumni Advisory Board as the Chair of the Mentorship Program, and most recently, as the Chair of the Alumni-Student Engagement Committee, working closely with staff and faculty on the creation of a new signature initiative for the reimagined full-time MBA.

Isabel Studer Noguez, School of Advanced International Studies 1992, 1999               
Dr. Isabel Studer became Director for Strategic Partnerships, Latin America, after being Executive Director for Mexico and Northern Central America at The Nature Conservancy. She was an alumna speaker at the SAIS 75th anniversary. A Fulbright and Ford Scholar, she has been recognized twice (2018 & 2019) by Forbes Magazine as one of the "100 Most Powerful Women in Mexico," and each year between 2013 and 2015, by Petróleo y Energía as one of the "100 Energy Leaders in Mexico." Dr. Studer has held several positions in the Mexican government. She is President of the Board of the Mexican Climate Initiative, and member of: the Board of Directors of the World Environment Center (WEC) in Washington DC, the Dow Chemical Company's Sustainability Experts’ Advisory Board (SEAC), Mexico's Advisory Council on Water, the French Development Agency in Mexico, and the National Council on Tourist Enterprises. Previously, she served as a member of: the National Climate Change Council, chaired by Nobel Prize recipient Mario Molina, the Advisory Council of the Center for Private Sector Studies for Sustainable Development (CESPEDES), the Scientific Committee for the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) of Science Po (Paris), and the Advisory Board of Notre Dame's Global Adaptation Index (ND GAIN), among others.

Jonathan Simons, School of Medicine 1985           
Jonathan Simons, MD, is an internationally recognized physician-scientist, oncologist, and acclaimed investigator in translational prostate cancer research.   He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Simons’ laboratories at Johns Hopkins University and Emory University made original contributions to human prostate cancer immunotherapy, immunobiology, and the basic molecular biology of prostate cancer angiogenesis and bone metastasis. Dr. Simons is the Founding Director of the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta. At Emory University, Dr.  Simons was also Chief of Hematology and Oncology, Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine, and Professor of Material Sciences at the Georgia Institutes of Technology Nanotechnology Center. Prior to recruitment to start the Cancer Institute at Emory University in 2000, Dr. Simons was Director of the Molecular Pharmacology Program and Genetic Therapy Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was a faculty member in Oncology and Urology in the Brady Urological Institute under Dr. Donald S. Coffey.  Dr. Simons received his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, and his Doctor of Medicine degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Dr. Simons has served in numerous board and leadership roles for the American Cancer Society, the American Association of Cancer Research, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Urological Association, Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, National Cancer Institute, FasterCures, StandUP2Cancer, Melanoma Research Alliance, Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, and the Veterans Administration Precision Oncology Partnership.      

Nelita True, Peabody Institute 1976
Nelita True is truly a legend among piano pedagogues. Her distinguished career as a performer and teacher is what young pianists only hope to achieve. She is globally recognized and held in the highest regard among musicians. And while the JHUAA Distinguished Alumna award might be about accomplishments, Nelita is also a great representative of the Hopkins and Peabody brands. Her legendary career has brought wonderful recognition for Peabody over the years, and the Society of Peabody Alumni feel that should weigh greatly in her consideration. When our committee considered her nomination, her accolades certainly factored in the decision, but her commitment to education in music was also noteworthy. Nelita True has not only earned a name for herself in the classical music field that still struggles to recognize females at the same rate as males, but also has put a heavy emphasis on teaching the future generations of pianists. Her students have won extremely difficult international piano competitions such as the Tchaikovsky and Chopin ones.