2023 Alumni Achievement Award
Hans E. Grossniklaus ’80 MD
Hans Grossniklaus is the Phinizy Calhoun Jr. Professor of Ophthalmology and Pathology at Emory University School of Medicine, and is director of the L.F. Montgomery Laboratory, a world-renowned eye pathology laboratory. His research has led to important understanding of choroidal neovascularization, retinoblastoma and melanoma. Grossniklaus received his MD degree from The Ohio State University, followed by residencies in ophthalmology and pathology at Case Western Reserve University, and fellowships in ophthalmic pathology at the Wilmer Institute and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Board certified in ophthalmology and pathology, Grossniklaus has served on faculty at Emory University and as director of the L.F. Montgomery Ophthalmic Pathology Laboratory since 1989, and as founding director of the Ocular Oncology Service since 2007.
Grossniklaus is a member of numerous national and international organizations, and has served as past president of the American Ophthalmological Society, the American Association of Ocular Oncologists and Pathologists, the Verhoeff-Zimmerman Society and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. He is currently on the board of directors of the American Board of Ophthalmology. He has served on 14 local committees and 5 national/international committees, including an NIH Study Section and is co-editor in chief of Ocular Oncology and Pathology and editor of the WHO Classification of Tumours of the Eye. He has received support from 11 federally funded grants including as a PI with continuous support of NCI ocular oncology grants. Grossniklaus has received numerous awards, including the AAO Senior Achievement Award, the outstanding former Heed Fellow Award, the W. Richard Green Lecture Award from The Macula Society and the Jackson Lecture from the AAO. He has authored/co-authored papers published in peer reviewed journals and 12 books/monographs.
He has trained 30 fellows from around the world, most of whom now hold academic positions. He has trained dozens of residents and medical students. He has received three teaching awards and a teaching grant.
2023 Alumni Service Award
Joel Goodnough ’79 MD
Joel Goodnough is a proud triple Buckeye, with undergraduate and medical degrees from Ohio State, and having completed his residency in Ob/Gyn at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Goodnough went on to practice at Northwest Community Hospital in Illinois. In addition to giving his best care to patients, he led major efforts in quality assurance, including establishing the first obstetrical hospitalist program at Northwest.
Upon retirement, Goodnough supported research and scholarships at the Ohio State College of Medicine, including the Medical Careers Pathway Post Baccalaureate Program — also known as MEDPATH, a program designed to increase the number of students from underrepresented populations in medicine, including those from economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.
Goodnough has also enjoyed mentoring students and working to champion and support the College’s Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Center, which represents a new model for health care education that will bring students from all health science disciplines to learn together. He is proud to represent the College of Medicine on the Ohio State Alumni Advisory Council and to serve on the board of the Ohio State Medical Alumni Society.
2023 Community Practice Alumni Award
Mary S. Applegate ’87 MD
Mary Applegate serves as the Medical Director for the Ohio Department of Medicaid and is focused on improving health outcomes for individuals enrolled in the Medicaid program across the state. A fellow of both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, Applegate has been caring for infants, youth, older adults and families in hospital and primary care sites for over 30 years. Special interests include the application of clinical principles and quality improvement science to health systems in order to improve the quality of health care, health outcomes and health equity.
Applegate has been instrumental in driving change in perinatal health, safer opioid prescribing, and integrating behavioral health care. In conjunction with Ohio’s Perinatal Quality Collaborative, she forged partnerships and developed new processes that improved preterm birth rates for high-risk mothers by 6% across the state, and 17% for those in the Medicaid program. As co-author of Ohio’s safe prescribing guidelines for opioids and other controlled substances, she contributed meaningfully to safer care and innovation in clinical practice. Applegate’s recent work has been focused on effective population health management by bringing health systems and payers together for collective impact, harnessing opportunities related to paying for real value in health care.
Steven J. Stack ’89 MD, MBA, FACEP
Steven J. Stack was appointed Commissioner for Public Health for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in February 2020, and was subsequently elected Secretary-Treasurer in fall 2020 and President-Elect in 2022 of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Stack is a board certified emergency physician with more than 20 years of emergency medicine clinical practice and emergency department management experience. Throughout his career, Stack has served in numerous medical professional association leadership roles. In 2006, he was the first board certified emergency physician ever elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees and in 2015 he served as AMA President.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Stack graduated magna cum laude in classical studies from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He completed his medical education and emergency medicine residency at Ohio State and his MBA at the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business.
2023 Early Career Achievement Award
Prasad R. Shankar ’09 MD
Prasad Shankar, a dedicated clinician-researcher from Springfield, OH, is a lifelong Buckeye. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Biology from The Ohio State University in 2005 and earned his medical degree from the OSU College of Medicine in 2009. Shankar completed his residency in diagnostic radiology at UPMC in 2014, serving as chief resident. He then pursued a fellowship in Abdominal Radiology at UPMC in 2015, where he was honored as Fellow of the Year.
Shankar has held leadership positions at local and national levels. While on faculty at the University of Michigan, he served as the departmental Associate Chair for Quality and Safety. Recently, he concluded a successful term co-chairing the Scientific Program Coordinating Committee for the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Society of Abdominal Radiology (SAR). Shankar has also served as an Associate Editor for Abdominal Radiology and a guest editor for the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
Driven by his passion for research, Shankar has made notable contributions in genitourinary radiology. He has secured competitive research grant funding and received the SAR Howard S. Stern research award. As primary investigator, he led two prospective studies evaluating the health impact of prostate MRI and various types of prostate biopsies in patients undergoing prostate cancer evaluation. Shankar's research efforts have included meta-analysis and big data techniques, providing insights into the role of PI-RADS as a quality metric and quantifying the risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis in patients with chronic kidney disease receiving a Group II gadolinium-based contrast agent. In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Shankar was elected a Fellow of the Society of Abdominal Radiology (FSAR) in 2022.
A respected teacher and mentor, Shankar guides trainees and junior faculty in research methods, statistical analysis, and manuscript development. He currently serves as a staff radiologist and Clinical Professor of Radiology at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, contributing to the field through his clinical expertise and academic pursuits.
2023 Faculty Teaching Award
Melissa Quinn ’15 PhD
A fierce educator and cheerleader for her students, Melissa Quinn, earned her doctorate in Anatomy from Ohio State University in 2015. Currently, Quinn is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy's Division of Anatomy in the Ohio State College of Medicine, where she teaches human gross anatomy and embryology to medical students. Quinn is active in the College of Medicine and serves many roles including academic program co-director for Part One of the Lead.Serve.Inspire (LSI) medical curriculum. She's a strong advocate for supporting students and mentoring them along their path toward medicine, professional school, research, and/or academia. She actively mentors medical students, and MS, and PhD anatomy students pursing their passions. Her vibrant Twitter account (@DrMquinn08) is filled with positivity for all students and colleagues to have a place to go to for a much-needed place to feel seen.
She is active in many different anatomy and medical education organizations but serves on the board of directors for the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society and previously as the central regional director and now as the incoming president-elect. She has received many teaching awards while at Ohio State including Best Teaching and Learning Methods for her work in Part One of the medical curriculum in 2019, 2021, and 2023, the 2020 Ohio State University Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award, the 2021 Part One Excellence in Education Award, the 2021 LSI Medical School Curriculum Inspire Award, as well as the 2022 Division of Anatomy’s Excellence in Education Award. In May 2022, she received the College of Medicine’s highest teaching award, Professor of the Year, for her significant impact on the training of medical students. Quinn’s other passion is community outreach. She is the director of Outreach and Community Planning for the Division of Anatomy which provides outreach opportunities for high school students, community members, firefighters, paramedics, etc.