Six individuals whose work has transformed patient care, advanced scientific discovery, strengthened medical education and expanded WashU Medicine’s impact around the world have been honored with the 2026 Dean’s Medals. The annual awards recognize extraordinary contributions to WashU Medicine and celebrate leaders whose achievements embody the institution’s interconnected missions of patient care, education and research.
This year’s recipients include Carol Loeb for leadership and service; Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, for clinical excellence; Dominique Cosco, MD, for education; Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, for research; and Randall Bateman, MD, and David Holtzman, MD, for innovation and commercialization.
Loeb received the Dean’s Medal for Leadership and Service for her visionary support of education at WashU Medicine.
Govindan, the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Chair of Medical Oncology, received the Dean’s Medal for Clinical Excellence. He has dedicated his career to improving outcomes for patients with lung cancer and cares for patients at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.
Cosco, a professor in the John T. Milliken Department of Medicine and associate dean for Graduate Medical Education, has received the Dean’s Medal for Education.
Gordon, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and founding director of WashU Medicine’s Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology, received the Dean’s Medal for Research for his groundbreaking discoveries of how the human gut microbiome contributes to many fundamental elements of health, as well as to diseases such as childhood malnutrition that represent global health challenges.
Bateman, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology, and Holtzman, the Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Distinguished Professor, both in WashU Medicine’s Department of Neurology, have jointly received the Dean’s Medal for Innovation and Commercialization. Together, they co-founded C2N Diagnostics, a WashU startup advancing blood-based tests for accurate and earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, revolutionizing how clinicians can identify Alzheimer’s and associated neurological conditions. The blood tests originated from research that Bateman and Holtzman conducted at WashU Medicine over many years.
Read more on the WashU Medicine news website.
