Distinguished Alumni Awardees

Dr. James M. Wilson completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Albion College and matriculated to the University of Michigan Medical Scholars Training Program (MSTP) for his MD and PhD degrees. Following a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in internal medicine and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute, he was recruited to the University of Michigan as a faculty member in the late 1980s to open his first academic laboratory. 

In 1993, Dr. Wilson relocated to the University of Pennsylvania and created the first and largest academic-based program in gene therapy. His laboratory discovered a family of viruses from primates called adeno-associated viruses (AAV) that could be engineered to be very effective gene transfer vehicles. These ‘vectors’ have become the technology platform of choice and have set the stage for the recent resurgence of the field of gene therapy. 

Dr. Wilson has also been active in facilitating the commercial development of these new gene therapy platforms through the establishment of ten biotechnology companies. His research has been focused on rare inherited diseases, ranging from cystic fibrosis to dyslipidemias to a variety of neurologic disorders and liver metabolic diseases, and on addressing these unmet needs for patients in marginalized populations. To date, his team’s accomplishments include 3 FDA-approved AAV-based gene therapies, several active programs currently in development, 95 patents on gene therapy-related technologies, and first-in-patient studies in 17 different diseases. 

Dr. Wilson currently serves as the President and CEO of GEMMABio, a company dedicated to developing rare disease gene therapies. He advocates for global access to advanced therapies for all rare disease patients.

Bobby Mukkamala, MD, a board-certified otolaryngologist—head and neck surgeon, was elected president of the American Medical Association in June 2025. A graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, he is in solo, private practice in Flint, Mich.

Dr. Mukkamala, who has been active in the AMA since residency, is a past Michigan representative to the AMA Young Physicians Section, a past recipient of the AMA Foundation’s “Excellence in Medicine” Leadership Award and, for 13 years, served as a member of the Michigan delegation to the AMA House of Delegates. In 2009 he was elected to the AMA Council on Science and Public Health and served as its chair from 2016 to 2017.

In addition to his leadership roles at the AMA, Dr. Mukkamala has served as a member of the Michigan State Medical Society Board of Directors since 2011, as board chair for two years, and as its president. He is also a past president of the Genesee County Medical Society (GCMS) and continues to serve on the GCMS Board of Directors.

While a wide range of public health issues are important to Dr. Mukkamala, no issue strikes closer to home than his own city of Flint’s nationally publicized struggles with high levels of lead leaching into the drinking water. As the past chair of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, he and the foundation’s board became the clearinghouse for funding projects focused on mitigating the effects of lead in local children. He is a member of the board of the Foundation for Flint that is working to increase access to high-quality early education for children, a proven strategy for helping children who have been exposed to lead. He was also recently appointed as a trustee of the C.S. Mott Foundation, which is headquartered in Flint and promotes a just, equitable and sustainable society.

Deeply committed to the revitalization of his hometown, Dr. Mukkamala returned to Flint after completing his residency at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago in 2000. Today, he shares an office with his wife, Nita Kulkarni, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist. Together, they have been part of the city’s revitalization, including demonstrating their dedication to Flint by establishing the Endowed Health Professions Scholarships at the University of Michigan, Flint, in 2012.

Outside of medicine, Dr. Mukkamala enjoys tinkering with his car collection and spending time with family that includes twin sons, Deven, a PhD candidate in political philosophy at Duke University and Nikhil, a biomedical engineer.

Matthew Davenport MD MBA FSAR FSABI FACR is the William Martel Professor of Radiology and Professor of Urology, and Service Chief and Vice Chair in the Department of Radiology at Michigan Medicine. He is an internationally recognized expert on renal mass imaging and the safety and efficacy of radiographic contrast material. He has served on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Medical Imaging Drugs Advisory Committee, the National Cancer Institute Clinical Imaging Steering Committee, as Chair of the American College of Radiology's (ACR) Committee on Drugs and Contrast Media, as Vice Chair of the ACR Quality and Safety Commission, and as Chair of the Renal Cell Carcinoma Disease-Focused Panel for the Society of Abdominal Radiology (SAR). He Co-Chairs the Oversight Committee of multicenter research groups working within the SAR and founded and Chairs the Radiology and Data System (RADS) Steering Committee for the ACR. He is a co-author on national policy statements, has published over 250 manuscripts, is frequently interviewed regarding important issues in Radiology (WSJ, NYT, NBC, Fortune, Forbes, etc), founded the Michigan Radiology Quality Collaborative, and co-directs the Weiser Center for Prostate Cancer. His primary clinical interests include high-value care and urologic imaging.

Susan Shore received her BA speech pathology and audiology and MA in auditory science at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.  She then moved to the Kresge Hearing Research Laboratories (LSU Medical School) in New Orleans where she received her Ph.D. in Physiology. Post-doctoral studies were completed at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Michigan.  She is currently Professor emerita of Otolaryngology, Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan.  She has received numerous awards including the Lydia Mendelson Award for Women in Science.  In 2020 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement in Science (AAAS) in the division of Neuroscience for outstanding contributions to sensory neuroscience.   

Dr. Shore spent a major portion of her research career mapping out the circuitry of the cochlear nucleus in healthy and noise-damaged systems.  Her studies revealed, importantly, that multimodal systems, including the somatosensory system project to the cochlear nucleus and are upregulated after cochlear damage.  Further studies showed that multimodal integration and long-term plasticity in the projection neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the fusiform cells, is altered in animals with tinnitus.  By manipulating long-term plasticity, she developed a novel treatment for tinnitus.

Other studies from the Dr. Shore’s lab revealed that ventral cochlear nucleus bushy cells play a role in hyperacusis development and small cells in the periphery of the cochlear nucleus encode signals in noise. These studies set the stage for treating hyperacusis and improving detection of signals in noise for people with cochlear synaptopathy.

In addition to her research, Dr Shore taught and directed the Sensory Systems Course in the Department of Neuroscience and was director of a large NIH T32 training grant.  She continues to be committed to educating the next generation of scientists with a focus on integrity.