Feinberg Names 2026 Mentors of the Year

Feinberg’s Medical Faculty Council (MFC) honored the recipients of the 2026 Mentor of the Year awards at a workshop on June 11, with awardees sharing their career journeys and insights they have gained from years of mentoring.

This year’s recipients were Hasan Alam, MD, chair of the Department of Surgery and the Loyal and Edith Davis Professor of Surgery, and Rick McGee, PhD, associate dean for professional development and professor of Medical Education.

Alam and McGee will be recognized for their awards at the 2026 Lewis Landsberg Research Day in September.

Finding Solutions to Surgical Problems

A physician-scientist for more than 20 years, Alam is a trauma surgeon whose research has led to major innovations in both military and civilian care. He came to Northwestern in 2020 from the University of Michigan.

Alam started his career at the largest trauma center in Washington DC, MedStar Washington Hospital Center. He then went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Uniformed Services University where he worked closely with Army and Navy residents. He was in the operating room on September 11, 2001, performing surgery on victims of the plane crash at the Pentagon.

When reflecting on his career, Alam said his mentors encouraged him to think about a surgical problem that needs a solution. His proximity to military personnel and trauma led him on a path to improving outcomes for trauma patients.

As the U.S. prepared to deploy troops to Afghanistan in fall 2001, Alam was tasked with developing wound dressings that troops could apply on the battlefield to stop bleeding wounds. In partnership with the Office of Naval Research, he and colleagues quickly identified and tested a clot-promoting agent, which was eventually developed into a battlefield dressing called QuikClot®.

This work inspired Alam to stay focused on addressing problems head-on. “Be the person who brings solutions forward,” Alam said. “Identify people who are better than you and find people who make you better.”

Mentors have a unique power to see things mentees may not, to advise on priorities and offer guidance, Alam said.

“The greatest impact in your career will not be your grants or your papers, but your people,” Alam said.

Improving Grant Writing to Support Research

Called “the mentor’s mentor,” McGee has influenced the careers of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientists. He earned his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Iowa, and although he trained in basic science, he became more interested in career development for scientists.

He worked as associate dean for student affairs at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and then became associate dean of the Mayo Clinic Graduate School. He worked in graduate student affairs at the National Institutes of Health before he joined Northwestern in 2007 to support faculty development.

During the workshop McGee shared that he has honed his mentoring style from his own inclination of empathic listening to enhance grant writing.

“I’ve been lucky to learn along the way,” McGee said. “When I started my career, I didn’t know where this was going.”

At Feinberg, McGee started working with a group of 10 faculty in 2008 to improve grant writing skills and enhance the story they are telling about their research. Now he leads 8-10 virtual groups of faculty, with 4-6 faculty in each group, with three cycles per year reaching more than 100 faculty annually.

He has developed a method of real-time reading and providing verbal feedback through culturally-responsive mentoring that directly benefits the faculty and the University at large.

“I had early mentors along the way who taught me to embrace independence and to meet people where they’re at,” McGee said.