Honors & Awards

Congratulations to our graduates!

Department news | June 27, 2024

On June 21, we celebrated the graduation of our psychiatry residents, psychology residents and ACGME fellows at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture. We are immensely proud of this outstanding group of new mental health professionals and wish them all the best in their future endeavors. We hope to stay connected with each of our graduates.

Numerous trainees and faculty members received accolades at the graduation ceremony. Congratulations to all!

Psychology Resident Awards

  • The Making a Difference Joan C. Martin, PhD, Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Psychology Resident – Carlos Yeguez, MS
  • The Director’s Prize: Dr. Nancy Robinson Award – Kristen O’Loughlin, MA, MS
  • The John E. Carr PhD Award for Outstanding Achievement in Empirically-Supported Psychotherapies – Merranda McLaughlin, MS
  • The Joseph Becker PhD Award for Outstanding Research Achievement - Antoine Lebeaut, MA

Psychology Internship Faculty Recognition Awards for Teaching & Supervising Excellence

Psychiatry Resident Awards

  • Outstanding Junior Resident – Matt Becker, MD, PhD
  • Hoffmann Award – Joellyn Sheehy, MD
  • Academic excellence – Marlene Tai, MD
  • Clinical excellence – Amanda Seely, MD
  • Outstanding resident – Zoe Renner, MD
  • Outstanding Teaching Scholars – James Lee, MD
  • Excellence in Public Psychiatry and Social Dedication – Joellyn Sheehy, MD, and Brittany Van Ness, MD
  • Outstanding Chief Resident – Elizabeth Richards Hersey, MD

Psychiatry Residency Faculty and Staff Recognition Awards

  • Deborah Cowley Psychiatry Chief Residents’ Award – Tuesday Burns, MD and Tina Hayashi, RD
  • Excellent Faculty Mentor Award – Stephen Thielke, MD
  • Excellent Teaching Faculty Award – Roger Huijon, MD

Brian Lusby receives Margaret O’Donnell Prize in Psychiatry

Department news | June 27, 2024

Congratulations to fourth year medical student Brian Lusby, MSc, this year’s recipient of the Margaret O’Donnell Prize in Psychiatry. We award this prize to a senior medical student who has been highly involved in behavioral health issues and done outstanding academic work in psychiatry.
 
Brian has engaged in a wide range of activities including co-founding an international global health conference to motivate high school and undergraduate students interested in global mental health; co-leading an addiction medicine non-clinical elective; and founding a journal club to foster collaborative learning and ongoing engagement in addiction research. He has also engaged in research to enhance care accessibility in under-resourced settings for persons with substance use disorders and engaged with legislators and county officials to advocate for behavioral health bills to increase access to care. We thank him for the amazing work he has done thus far for our field and for the many things we know he will accomplish as a psychiatrist and colleague in the future.

Alexis Carnduff receives AAP Resident Psychiatric Educator Award

Department news | June 27, 2024

Congratulations to the 2024 Association of Academic Psychiatrists (AAP) Resident Psychiatric Educator (RPE) Award recipient, Alexis Carnduff, MD. This two-year award represents a high achievement, with the selection process placing a great value on outstanding leaders, educators, researchers, and clinicians in the field of psychiatry. Alexis will receive complimentary registration and accommodation for the 2024 AAP Annual Meeting, during which she'll be presented with her award. She will also be eligible to present at the 2025 annual meeting in Washington D.C. Please congratulate her on this very well-deserved award.

Congratulations to our APA/APAF Fellowship recipients

Department news | June 27, 2024

The American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF) Resident Fellowship Program complements psychiatric residency training by providing residents with opportunities to attend APA meetings, receive mentorship, participate in leadership development and scholarly projects, and network with other psychiatrists and trainees nationally. We are proud to announce that four of our psychiatry residents received an APA/APAF Fellowship this year.

  • Leadership: Matt Becker, MD, PhD
  • Diversity Leadership: Farzaneh Farhadi, MD
  • Public Psychiatry: Enrique Guzman van Dyken, MD, MPH
  • SAMHSA Minority: Ruth Assefa, MD, MPH

Faculty and staff department awards

Department news | June 27, 2024

At the department annual meeting in June, we honored several members of our faculty and staff who have contributed in various ways to the success of our department. A big congratulations to each of them!

Exceptional Professional Staff Award:
Colleen Himes
The Exceptional Professional Staff Award honors and celebrates the valuable efforts a professional staff member makes toward supporting the mission of the department. The award recognizes individuals for their overall dedication and service and for upholding our core values of collaboration, continuous learning and mentorship, and integrity and accountability. This year’s Exceptional Professional Staff Award went to Colleen Himes, Online Tools and Web Developer for the Operations and IT Team. This excerpt from her nomination packet gives a hint at her exceptional service:

“Colleen is consistently responsive to our requests for help and tackles complex projects with ease – or at least she makes it seem that way! She consistently delivers high-quality results for our programs, demonstrates exceptional problem-solving abilities, and does all of this with a positive attitude, and a fun and collaborative style."

Exceptional Classified Staff Award:
Carolina Ibarra
The Exceptional Classified Staff Award honors and celebrates the valuable efforts a classified staff member makes toward supporting the mission of the department. The award recognizes individuals for their overall dedication and service and for upholding our core values of collaboration, continuous learning and mentorship, and integrity and accountability. This year’s Exceptional Classified Staff Award went to Carolina Ibarra, Research Study Assistant with Trauma Recovery & Resilience Innovations (TRI). This excerpt from their nomination packet gives a hint at Carolina’s exceptional service:

“Carolina is skilled at understanding what needs to be done and doing it accurately, efficiently, and without fuss. No matter what, she seems totally immune to being overwhelmed or stressed. Instead, she’s enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn something new and then pass it along to others. She’s also highly collaborative. Even when her workload is heavier, she’s always the first to volunteer to help someone else, and the quality of her work never suffers."

Exceptional Team Staff Award:
Center for Suicide Prevention and Recovery (CSPAR)
The Exceptional Team Award was born from the recognition that we have an incredible number of effective teams that support our work and that no one person acts in isolation. The winner of this year’s Exceptional Team Award is the Center for Suicide Prevention and Recovery team. Members include Ignatius Balinbin; Natalie Crouch; Anna Evanson; Amanda Kerbrat, MSW; Lucas O’Bryan; Juliann Salisbury, MSW; Payton Smythe; and Barbara Wright.

An excerpt from their nomination, written by Kate Comtois, PhD, says, “Each of my staff has been faced with disruption, new working relationships, the tedium of learning, tracking, and chasing down administrative tasks in the new UW system, and myriad other changes both good and bad. Despite this, they have been ever positive and productive – meeting and exceeding challenges, supporting each other, coming together for our weekly lunches, bringing hilarity to meetings when we needed it most, and generally being fun and smart as a whip at the same time."

Salaried Clinical Pathway Outstanding Mentor Award
Mark Snowden, MD, MPH
The Salaried Clinical Pathway Outstanding Mentor Award recognizes a faculty member who has done an outstanding job mentoring and furthering the careers of salaried clinical faculty members (e.g., mentoring about developing clinical expertise, achieving regional and national recognition, developing and leading clinical programs, or how to be promoted in this pathway). The winner of this year’s award is Mark Snowden, MD, MPH, the Chief of Psychiatry at Harborview Medical Center. This excerpt from Mark’s nomination packet gives a hint at his exceptional mentorship:

“Mark’s ability to encourage others warmly while holding firm boundaries to facilitate a robust pathway moving forward is a role model. Mark's mentorship is beyond career advice. It is leadership by example.”

Outstanding Clinician Teacher Junior Faculty Award
Jennifer Erickson, DO, FAPA
The Outstanding Clinician Teacher Junior Faculty Award recognizes an outstanding clinician teacher faculty member at the Assistant Professor level for excellence in teaching, curriculum development, educational scholarship, and/or educational administration. This year’s winner is Assistant Professor Jennifer Erickson, DO, FAPA, and this excerpt from her nomination packet gives a hint at her impact as a teacher and clinician:

“Dr. Erickson has made a major impact as a teacher across multiple educational programs in our department. She is an outstanding clinician educator…who possesses an uncommon and broad skillset.”

Gary J. Tucher Career Teaching Award
Suzanne Murray, MD
The Gary J. Tucker Career Teaching Award, named in honor of the Chair of our department from 1985 through 1997, recognizes exceptional career achievement in teaching and education and honors Dr. Tucker's significant contributions to our academic programs, his leadership and dedication as a teacher, clinician, and scholar, his love of teaching, and his ability to inspire and encourage trainees. We give this award to a member of the academic or clinical faculty who has demonstrated, throughout their career, outstanding skills as a teacher and dedication to education. This year, Associate Professor Suzanne Murray, MD, received this award.

Wayne J. Katon Outstanding Mentor Award
Andy Saxon, MD
The Wayne J. Katon Outstanding Mentor Award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated a sustained commitment to fostering the creative, scholarly, professional and personal development of their mentees. The 2024 recipient is Andy Saxon, MD, Director of the Center for Excellence in Substance Abuse Treatment and Education. This excerpt from Andy’s nomination gives a hint at his exceptional mentorship:

“It is hard to overstate the impact that Dr. Saxon has had on training and mentoring the current and future workforce of addiction providers in the state of Washington and around the country.”

Michael V. Vitiello receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Department news | June 27, 2024

Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Michael V. Vitiello, PhD, for receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Dr. Vitiello is an internationally recognized expert in sleep, circadian rhythms and sleep disorders in aging with a focus on the causes, consequences and treatments of disturbed sleep, circadian rhythms and cognition in older adults. After a distinguished career spanning over four decades in our department, he retired in 2022. Learn more

Larimer receives Marlatt Mentorship Award

Department news | April 30, 2024

Congratulations to Mary Larimer, PhD, for receiving the of the Marlatt Mentorship Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA). The Marlatt Mentorship Award recognizes an individual who h as demonstrated exceptional mentoring of young researchers in the alcohol research field. Mary Larimer, PhD, herself a former student of G. Alan Marlatt, has been an exemplar in organization, detail, innovation and effect of her mentoring. In addition to NIH-sponsored projects where she is principal or co-investigator, Dr. Larimer is the mentor to junior scientists on multiple NIH-funded projects led by junior scientists, thus opening pathways to independence and a passing of the baton to the next generation. Her scientific “offspring” includes an Associate Dean and a Director of a PhD program.

“It is humbling to receive this award in Alan’s name, given what an enormous impact he had on my life and the lives of so many others he mentored over the years,” said Dr. Larimer. “I also want to thank Melissa Lewis, Dana Litt, Christine Lee and Jason Kilmer for their work in nominating me for the award—I really appreciate it, and it is deeply meaningful to me to receive it!”

Megan Goldenshteyn, 2024 UWMC Patient Safety Hero Award

Department news | April 30, 2024

Megan Goldenshteyn, PhD, was recently selected as a recipient of the 2024 UW Medical Center Patient Safety Hero Award. The award is given to faculty and staff who have gone above and beyond to intervene on behalf of patients. Dr. Goldenshteyn works as a licensed psychologist at the Institute on Human Development and Disability (IHDD) in the Child Development Clinic, Cardiac Neurodevelopment Clinic, and the Infant Development Follow-up Clinic where she conducts psychological and developmental evaluations. Congratulations!

Curry, Green and the Addiction Medicine Consult Team receive UW Medicine Cares Award

Department news | April 30, 2024

Congratulations to Aaron Green, MD, Christine Curry, MD, and the Addiction Medicine Consult Team at Harborview for receiving Spring 2024 UW Medicine Cares Awards! The UW Medicine Cares Award was established in 2013 to formally recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of individuals and teams who consistently exemplify the UW Medicine Service Culture Guidelines.

The UW Medicine Patient Experience Team selected Drs. Green and Curry based on their exemplary adherence to these guidelines, as demonstrated by these summaries of their nomination:

Dr. Green provides generous listening, attention, and detailed care for his patients. When his colleagues think of “unconditional positive regard,” he immediately comes to mind. He authentically works with patients in a curious, nonjudgmental way. Dr. Green teaches trainees and others around him the power of undivided attention and holistic care for patients. He goes the extra mile to track down a medication for a patient, to chat with a distant family member, to research the nuances of medication interaction, or to create an individualized treatment plan.

Dr. Curry stepped in to fill the role of interim clinic director for the last year; despite her busy schedule, she always has time to talk through problems with colleagues. She also goes above and beyond to ensure that each patient feels heard, understood, and empowered in their recovery journey. Her ability to build strong therapeutic relationships with her patients is truly remarkable. Dr. Curry’s compassionate approach and deep understanding of the unique challenges faced by individuals experiencing early psychosis have helped to create a supportive and effective treatment environment; her expertise makes a significant impact on the lives of our patients.

The Addiction Medicine Consult Team currently led by Matt Iles-Shih, MD, MPH, and Christine Curry, MD, also showed exemplary adherence to the UW Medicine Service Culture Guidelines. “In your work and interactions with colleagues and the public, you have shown that you understand and embrace the principles of service excellence.” -- UW Medicine Patient Experience Team

Thank you to Dr. Curry, Dr. Green and the entire Addiction Medicine Consult Team for the tremendous work you do with our patients and trainees every day. We are so fortunate to have you on our team!

Congratulations to our Staff Scholarship Award recipients

Department news | March 28, 2024

Congratulations to the recipients of our latest round of Staff Scholarship Awards! Funded by department and philanthropic funds, these awards support professional development of classified and professional staff who work in our department. Awardees for this round include:

  • HaRRT Center Team Award – for staff and research assistants to attend the American Psychological Association conference in Seattle.
  • SPIRIT Center Team Award - to attend the POD Course “Creating Equity with Gracious Space”.
  • Aaron Davis (HaRRT Center) – to attend the American Psychological Association conference in Seattle.
  • Kelcey Schmitz (SMART Center) – to attend the Association for Positive Behavior Support Conference in Chicago.
  • Mackenzie Tennison (SPIRIT Center) - to attend a two-day Certified Clinical Trauma Professional Training.
  • Roger Goosey (SMART Center) – to attend the Society of Clinical Research Associates Conference in Las Vegas.
  • Victoria Shepard (SPIRIT Center) – to enroll in a Spanish Medical Terminology course.

Thank you to the Staff EDI Professional Development & Training subcommittee (Vaughan Collins, MSW, Amy Davis, Winnie Ho, and Andie Uomoto, MPA) for reviewing the proposals and to the donors who make this program possible.