Downstate Students Named Among SUNY’s Best:
Apr 14, 2009
Two Receive Chancellor’s Awards for Student Excellence
Brooklyn, NY - Two Downstate students, Michael Allison and Jonathan Silverberg, have received the 2009 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence, the highest student honor accorded by the State University of New York. They are among 238 top students selected from all SUNY campuses who have “integrated academic excellence with other aspects of their lives.” Each received a framed certificate and medallion at a ceremony held in Albany on April 7.
Fourth-year medical student Michael Allison represents academic achievement combined with student leadership and community service. He is president of the Medical Student Council and student representative on the Dean's Council on Education. A member of Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the national medical honor society, he also has been inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. In addition to tutoring fifth graders in a Brooklyn after-school program, he served as faculty advisor to high school scholars in the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine and coaches a local high school lacrosse team. (In 2004, while at Amherst, he was named a US Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association Scholar All-American.)
At Commencement in May, Jonathan Silverberg will become Downstate’s first three-degree earner, graduating with MD, PhD, and MPH degrees. Recognized for outstanding research and scholarly achievements, he has published 24 papers and abstracts, with an additional ten submitted or in preparation. His thesis research—on the immune system consequences of seizures in mice—has been submitted for publication as two major papers. He also finds time to mentor students in the Brooklyn College/Downstate BA/MD Program. In 2008, he was awarded the SUNY Downstate Gold Humanism Award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism Honor Society and the Alan S. Josephson Award for Excellence in Immunology.
Students graduating between June 2008 and May 2009 were considered for the award. SUNY Downstate was permitted to have two winners, based on the size of its student enrollment.
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About SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University
Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn is one of four academic health centers (AMCs) in The State University of New York (SUNY) 64-campus system and the only SUNY AMC in New York City dedicated to health education, research, and patient care for the borough’s 2.7 million residents. Its flagship hospital, University Hospital at Downstate (UHD), is a teaching hospital and benefits from the expertise of Downstate’s exceptional medical school and world-class academic center research facilities. With a staff of over 800 physicians representing 53 specialties and subspecialties, Downstate offers comprehensive healthcare services to the community.
UHD provides high-risk neonatal and infant services, pediatric nephrology, and dialysis for kidney diseases and is the only kidney transplantation program in Brooklyn. Beyond its clinical expertise, Downstate houses a range of esteemed educational institutions, including its College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, School of Graduate Studies, and School of Public Health. Downstate fosters innovation through its multifaceted biotechnology initiative, the Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT, which support early-stage and more mature biotech companies.