Drake Medals Awarded to Two College of Medicine Faculty

The UC College of Medicine on Saturday, May 23, presented two current faculty members with the college’s highest honor, the Daniel Drake Medal.

The Daniel Drake Medal, established in 1985, is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Medicine and is given annually to living faculty or alumni for their outstanding and unique contributions to medical education, scholarship and research.

Drake Medal recipients for 2015 are Fred Finkelman, MD, professor of medicine and pediatrics and investigator and clinician at the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; and Uma Kotagal, MBBS, MSc, executive director of the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s and UC professor of pediatrics.

Finkelman and Kotagal received their medals during a ceremony and dinner at the Queen City Club Saturday, May 23. Their names, along with biographies and photos, have been added to the Daniel Drake Medal exhibit in the Medical Sciences Building on UC’s medical campus. 

Fred Finkelman, MD

Finkelman earned his medical degree from Yale University in 1971 and completed his residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Following an appointment with the Public Health Service and a fellowship in Dallas, he served for 18 years with Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. In 1995, Finkelman was named McDonald Professor of Medicine and director of the UC Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology, a position he held for 10 years. He is an investigator and clinician at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He also has an appointment at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Finkelman has made critical contributions to our understanding of B lymphocyte activation, immunoglobulin isotype switching, host defense, antigen presentation, and anaphylaxis and food allergy. 

Uma Kotagal, MBBS, MSc

Kotagal received her medical degree from the University of Bombay in 1971 and served as an intern, resident and neonatal fellow at Detroit General Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Michigan. She joined the faculty of the UC College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics in 1977 following two years at UC and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as a postdoctoral trainee. Currently executive director of the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s and UC professor of pediatrics, Kotagal is an internationally recognized leader in improving child health. A member of the Institute of Medicine, she pioneered early demonstrations and experiments in closing health care gaps and led Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pursuing Perfection initiative at Cincinnati Children’s.