Our heartiest congratulations go out to Donald D. Heistad, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Neuroscience and Pharmacology and the Pomerantz Family Chair in Cardiology, who is slated to be honored with the 2020 Daryl and Nancy Granner Distinguished Mentor Award. This award is given to distinguished faculty who have served a significant portion of their career at Iowa and whose mentees have gone on to distinguished careers of their own. Awardees are also known for their collegiality, dedication to their profession, and their advancement of the Carver College of Medicine and the University of Iowa. Dr. Heistad is certainly worthy of this award with his over forty years of exemplary service at the UI and an outstanding record of mentoring trainees, faculty and staff at all levels!

Heistad’s nomination for the award was supported in glowing terms by his nominator, E. Dale Abel, M.D., Ph.D., Chair and DEO of the Department of Internal Medicine, and by numerous of Heistad’s mentees, who have themselves gone on to distinguished careers with some carrying on his tradition here at Iowa. Consistently cited was how Heistad’s devoted mentoring became a model for them in their own mentoring of trainees.

Dr. Heistad’s award will be presented at a ceremony in Fall 2021, with the Distinguished Mentor’s Lecture to be delivered by David J. Skorton, M.D., president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and former colleague of Heistad’s in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine.

A fuller testament to Dr. Heistad’s career and mentoring history, including attestations of his mentees, can be found at https://internalmedicineiowa.org/2020/02/06/heistad-earns-distinguished-mentor-award/. Please join us in congratulating Don on this well deserved recognition!