More than 15 spine and orthopedic surgeons have been honored in 2025.
Note: This is not an exhaustive list.
1. Brian Cole, MD, of Chicago-basedMidwest Orthopaedics at Rush, earned the 2025 Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation Clinical Research Award. He was recognized for his 25 years of work to advance osteochondral allograft transplantation for cartilage and bone defects.
2. Nicholas Piuzzi, MD, of Cleveland Clinic, earned the 2025 Kappa Delta Young Investigator Award for research on advanced analytics and personalized prediction tools in total hip and knee replacements.
3. Matthew Provencher, MD, of The Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., earned the 2025 Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award for research he conducted over 25 years on anterior shoulder instability research. He and his team studied the early identification of glenohumeral pathomorphology and optimized return-to-duty strategies in military populations.
4. Brian Feeley, MD, earned the 2025 Kappa Delta Elizabeth Winston Lanier Award for research in advancing the understanding of muscle degeneration in rotator cuff injuries and outcomes. Over the last 15 years he and his team found the source of fatty infiltration that causes muscle atrophy, leading to poor functional outcomes in rotator cuff repairs.
5. Colleen Sabatini, MD, earned the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Humanitarian Award, according to a March 12 news release. She’s a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at the University of California San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Dr. Sabatini has also done pediatric orthopedic work abroad, with a focus on serving children in Uganda since 2013.
6. Thomas Sculco, MD, earned the AAOS Diversity Award. He is surgeon-in-chief emeritus at New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery. In this decades-long career he developed and established multiple infrastructures to enhance diversity within orthopedic, address healthcare disparities and bolster patient care.
7. Steven Gitelis, MD, earned the William W. Tipton, Jr., MD, Leadership Award. He is a professor and director of the Rush Musculoskeletal Oncology Program in Chicago. He”s also chief medical officer of Onkos, a company focused on cancer care. Under his leadership at Rush, he created and grew one of the region’s largest sarcoma programs and formed the Rush Multispecialty Musculoskeletal tumor board.
8. Ketan Bulsara, MD, earned the 2025 UConn Health Board of Directors Faculty Recognition Award. Dr. Bulsara joined UConn Health in 2017 and is the inaugural chair of the newly established department of neurosurgery at the UConn School of Medicine. Since his arrival, he has worked to advance neurosurgery’s clinical, research and educational initiatives and helped develop and create the Brain and Spine Institute at UConn Health.
9. Providence, R.I.-based University Orthopedics sports medicine and orthopedic surgeon Paul Fadale, MD, has been honored by the Providence Bruins, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Boston Bruins, after serving as its head team physician for 33 years. The Providence Bruins have named their athletic training exam room after Dr. Fadale, who began working with the team in its inaugural season in 1992.
10. New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery honored surgeon-in-chief emeritus Todd Albert, MD. Dr. Albert is a spine surgeon and has written more than 90 book chapters, edited 14 books and published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles. He is a Richard Rogers Professor to Advance Spine Care at HSS and a professor of orthopedic surgery at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City.
11. Hafiz Kassam, MD, has earned the Charles S. Neer Award for Clinical Science by the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons. Dr. Kassam received the award for work as lead author and principal investigator of a Level I randomized controlled trial that demonstrated how to reduce bacterial burden and potential infection rates in shoulder surgery.
12. The North American Spine Society named its five Recognition Awards for 2025.
Henry Farfan Award: Virginie Lafage, PhD, who has extensive clinical training in spine surgery with focuses on sagittal spinopelvic alignment, adult spinal deformity, cervical deformity and soft tissue analysis. The award recognizes outstanding contributions in spine related basic science research.
Leon Wiltse Award: Michael Steinmetz, MD, who is an academic spine surgeon and chair of the department of neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. The award recognizes excellence in leadership and/or clinical research in spine care.
David Selby Award: David O’Brien, MD, who is physiatrist at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. The award recognizes outstanding contributions in spine related basic science research.
Spine Advocacy Award: Donna Lahey, RNFA, who is registered nurse first assist with more than three decades of experience specializing in spinal research and education. She is also CEO of the Spine Institute of Arizona. The award recognizes NASS members who have made exceptional contributions to the federal advocacy efforts on behalf of patients and members of the society.
International Award: Hani Mhaidli, MD, PhD, who is an orthopedic surgeon and has served on multiple NASS committees. The award recognizes international members of the NASS who have made outstanding contributions in basic science research, clinical research, or service to the organization.
