Alex M. Dussaq, M.D., Ph.D., was awarded the William Boyd Medal at the School of Medicine Awards Ceremony on Friday, May 17. The Boyd Medal is given every year to the medical student whose performance in all aspects of their pathology education has been most outstanding.

Peter Anderson, DVM, PhD, Professor, Pathology, with Dr. Alex Dussaq on receiving the award.

Dr. Dussaq, a native of Reno, Nevada, came to Birmingham to join the Medical Scientist Training Program (MD-PHD) at UAB. His research centered around developing innovative bioinformatics approaches to solve clinical problems. He worked in the UAB Department of Pathology Division of Genomics Diagnostics and Bioinformatics as well as studied with Christopher Willey M.D., Ph.D. from the UAB Hazelrig Salter Radiation Oncology Center. Dussaq has accepted a position in the Pathology Residency Program at Stanford University.

The Boyd Medal has been awarded continuously since 1967 and is given on behalf of the Alabama Association of Pathologists and the faculty of the UAB Department of Pathology to the graduating medical student whose performance in Pathology through-out their medical school career has been most exemplary. This award was named in honor of Dr. William Boyd who is considered by many to be one of the fathers of modern pathology education.

Dr. Boyd was born in Portsoy, Scotland in 1885 and obtained his medical degree in 1908 at Edinburgh. He was a medical officer in the First World War and published his first book, With a Field Ambulance at Ypres in 1916, about his war experience. He then moved to Canada where he rose to the rank of professor of pathology at the University of Manitoba, later moving to the University of Toronto and then to the University of British Columbia.  After retirement he came to Birmingham and was a visiting professor at UAB from 1955 to 1962. During his career Dr. Boyd published seven textbooks, one of which was the first pathology text to emphasize clinical-pathologic correlations and pathogenesis. This text was popular worldwide and saw the publication of 20 editions. Dr. Boyd was once referred to as: "The Pathologist with a silver tongue and a golden pen."

Congratulations to Dr. Alex Dussaq, the 2019 winner of the Boyd Medal and cash award.