College News

The University of Oklahoma is pleased to announce that Abdul Rafeh Naqash, MD has been awarded a 2025 Conquer Cancer Career Development Award (CDA) by the ASCO Foundation. The award will be presented during the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held May 30–June 3 in Chicago, Illinois.

The prestigious Harold Hamm International Prize for Biomedical Research in Diabetes, an honor bestowed by OU Health Harold Hamm Diabetes Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences, will be awarded this fall to Professor Dr. Anette-Gabriele Ziegler, Director of the Institute of Diabetes Research, Helmholtz Munich, German Research Center for Environmental Health. She is also Chair in Diabetes and Gestational Diabetes at Technische Universität München, School of Medicine. She is being honored for her research to understand the pathogenesis of Type 1 diabetes and efforts toward its prediction, early diagnosis and prevention. 

In medicine, moving a breakthrough from the lab to the doctor’s office often involves navigating a dizzying maze of bureaucratic and financial obstacles. Most health care startups – 90% by some estimates – fail to find a path to profitability. But one Oklahoma City-based company is poised to become an exception. Fourteen years after its founding, Moleculera Biosciences is emerging from the startup labyrinth.

The Univeristy of Oklahoma College of Medicine is pleased to announce the appointment of Irene Alexandraki, M.D., Ph.D., MPH, MBA, FACP, as the Inaugural Vice Dean of Education at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, effective July 2025, pending OU Regents’ approval.  Alexandraki will also work closely with the OU School of Community Medicine. 

Ana J. Chucair-Elliott, Ph.D., an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and research member of Dean McGee Eye Institute, has been funded by the BrightFocus Foundation to investigate how aging, diet and inflammation contribute to retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) degeneration, a deterioration of the layer of cells in the back of the eye.