The Dean's Excellence Awards are annual honors awarded to select UAB School of Medicine faculty for excellence in the areas of teaching, service, research, mentorship, and diversity enhancement. Awardees are chosen through a peer-review process and facilitated by a member of the dean's leadership team.

In 2021 the school recognized 18 faculty for their outstanding achievements, and the UAB Department of Pathology is excited to have four winners this year: Peter Anderson, DVM, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular & Cellular Pathology, senior award for teaching; Brandi McCleskey, M.D., Assistant Professor, Forensic Pathology, junior award for mentoring; Sixto Leal, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Laboratory Medicine, junior award for service; and Frida Rosenblum Donath, M.D., Assistant Professor, Anatomic Pathology, junior award for teaching. 

Peter Anderson, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Peter Anderson, D.V.M., Ph.D., is the 2021 recipient of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Teaching for senior faculty. Anderson is a professor in the Department of Pathology, Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology and the Director of Pathology Undergraduate Education at the UAB School of Medicine.

Anderson received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Washington State University in Pullman, WA. After veterinary school, he was selected to participate in a Human and Comparative Pathology Residency Training Program at the UAB School of Medicine, where he completed a fellowship in human pathology. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Experimental Cardiovascular Pathology at UAB and joined the Department of Pathology as a UAB faculty member in 1986. His research interests include cardiac hypertrophy, atherosclerosis, and intravascular stents. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and 6 patents.

He began teaching medical students in the UAB School of Medicine in 1984 as a postdoctoral fellow and has taught pathology to every class of UAB medical students since. Throughout his career, Anderson has been actively involved with teaching in various UAB health science programs, including medical, dental, optometry, graduate, and undergraduate students. Anderson received the Best Course Director Award at the very first UAB Argus Awards ceremony in 1996 and was the first UAB School of Medicine faculty member to receive the prestigious AOA-AAMC Glaser Award, which is given to the best medical educator in the United States and Canada. He received the American Society for Investigative Pathology Stanley Robbins Distinguished Educator Award and the Michele Raible Distinguished Teaching Award in Undergraduate Medical Education. In addition, he was the first UAB School of Medicine faculty member to ever receive the UAB Ingalls Award for lifetime achievement in teaching at UAB.

 Brandi McCleskey, M.D.

Brandi McCleskey, M.D. has been named the junior faculty recipient of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Mentorship. McCleskey is an assistant professor in the Division of Forensic Pathology, UAB Department of Pathology.  

McCleskey earned her medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 2012 and earned her board certifications from the American Board of Pathology for Anatomic and Clinical Pathology in 2016 and Forensic Pathology in 2017.

She joined UAB in 2012 as a resident in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and was named Chief Resident in 2015. McCleskey stayed at UAB to complete her fellowship in Forensic Pathology in 2016 and joined the Department of Pathology as a faculty member in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Division of Forensic Pathology. She has since been named Director of the Longitudinal Pathology Curriculum in the Department of Undergraduate Medical Education, the Director of the Department of Pathology’s Residency Training Program, and the Assistant Director of the Department of Pathology’s Forensic Pathology Fellowship Program.

“I feel like I entered a new family in 2012, and even though my roles have changed during my time here, I’m very much supported and respected by members of the department,” McCleskey says. “I am honored to receive this award as a reflection of my career at UAB, from trainee to faculty member.”

Sixto M. Leal, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.

Sixto M. Leal, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Laboratory Medicine, UAB Department of Pathology, is awarded the 2021 Dean’s Excellence Award for Service as junior faculty.

Leal is director of UAB Medicine’s Clinical Microbiology Laboratory and the Fungal Reference Laboratory. He joined UAB Pathology in 2018 as an assistant professor—his first faculty position—having completed residency in clinical pathology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a fellowship in clinical microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic. He earned board certification in clinical pathology and medical microbiology before joining UAB.

Leal and his team created their own COVID-19 PCR test in early March 2020, when no commercial systems were available. This test—one of the first in the nation to obtain emergency use authorization—exhibited the highest sensitivity in a nationwide FDA comparison study. It allowed UAB hospitals and regional hospitals in Alabama to reopen for regular care, and from March 17 to August, Leal’s team was able to increase the rate of COVID-19 testing from 150 tests a day to more than 11,300 tests each day.

In late 2020, UAB’s Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship recognized Leal as a UAB Faculty Innovator of the Year for his work on the GuideSafe program to provide pooled COVID testing to allow for the safe return of thousands of college students to their campuses statewide. He also received a UAB COVID-19 Research Pilot Award in 2020 for his work on the identification of prognostic markers mediating infection outcome.

Frida Rosenblum Donath, M.D.

Frida Rosenblum Donath, M.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Pathology, is awarded the 2021 Dean’s Excellence Award in Teaching as junior faculty, an award she calls, “a dream come true.”

Rosenblum joined UAB Pathology in 2014 as an assistant professor, having completed fellowships in cytopathology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and in surgical pathology and hematopathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She became the department’s Cytopathology Fellowship Program Director in 2017.

Rosenblum recalls learning that two of her colleagues and friends, former faculty Deniz Peker, M.D., and Jennifer Gordetsky, M.D., had won the award in 2018. “I thought, ‘That is just awesome…I wish I could win it myself,’” Rosenblum says. “And I did, through a lot of hard work, through a lot of effort and help from the department and all my colleagues.”

Rosenblum has been nominated repeatedly for the School of Medicine’s Argus Awards, which she won in October of 2020 as Best Educator in MS2 Organ Module – Hematology/Oncology. She won the Leonard H. Robinson Award for Excellence in resident Education in Anatomic Pathology in 2018, and received numerous recognitions for her work as a trainee.

Please join us in congratulating Drs. Anderson, McCleskey, Leal, and Rosenblum on the recognition of their outstanding contributions to the Department of Pathology and School of Medicine.