IDSA honors leaders in infectious diseases at IDWeek 2026

The Infectious Diseases Society of America is honored to recognize nine outstanding leaders at IDWeek 2026 for their contributions to the field of infectious diseases.

“The Society is honored to recognize these distinguished physicians, researchers, mentors and leaders whose contributions have helped advance the field of infectious diseases,” said IDSA President Ronald G. Nahass, MD, MHCM, FIDSA. “Their accomplishments have advanced scientific discovery, strengthened patient care and shaped the future of our field. Through their exceptional leadership and commitment to excellence, they have not only made an enduring impact on infectious diseases but also inspired the next generation to pursue and advance this vital work.”

Alexander Fleming Award for Lifetime Achievement: Stephen B. Calderwood, MD, FIDSA
This award honors an IDSA member or fellow for a career that reflects major contributions to the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about infectious diseases. For 2026, we recognize Stephen B. Calderwood, MD, FIDSA.

Dr. Calderwood, the Morton N. Swartz, MD, Distinguished Academy Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has demonstrated an exceptional ability to conduct high-impact basic and translational research with global impact. His research spans infectious diseases, immunology and molecular biology, with a focus on pathogen-host interactions and epidemiological dynamics.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Calderwood led a group of investigators at Harvard in collaborating with colleagues at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, focusing on cholera and Vibrio cholerae. These studies revolutionized the field and advanced our understanding of cholera to recognize its truly inflammatory nature and the immune responses that mediate protection, informing vaccine development and use.

As chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital for 27 years, Dr. Calderwood built one of the largest and most respected academic ID divisions in the country, which became a national model for excellence and equity.

A member of the IDSA Board of Directors from 2007 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2016, Dr. Calderwood has made numerous impactful contributions to the Society. As president in 2015, he led a strategic plan focusing on increasing recruitment into ID and emphasizing unity in diversity, and he helped design the IDWeek mentorship program. Dr. Calderwood also led significant initiatives as chair of IDSA’s Training Program Directors’ Committee (2002-2005), where he focused on increasing the recruitment of women and people from underrepresented backgrounds into ID and getting ID into the Fellowship Match.

Dr. Calderwood has demonstrated dedication to the next generation through his clinical and teaching activities and mentee interactions. He has trained more than 40 fellows and students in his laboratory.

“Dr. Calderwood has been a national voice for excellence in science, education and clinical care whose extraordinary career and enduring contributions to the field exemplify the highest ideals of the Alexander Fleming Award for Lifetime Achievement,” said Dr. Nahass. “The Society is proud to celebrate Dr. Calderwood’s commitment to infectious diseases research, global impact and dedication to ID academia by honoring him with this award.”

Other awards presented during IDWeek 2026 include: 

Anthony Fauci Courage in Leadership Award: Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, FIDSA
This award celebrates individuals who inspire and encourage others to make a difference. It is awarded to a person who has demonstrated courage in leadership and a commitment to promoting scientific integrity, advocating for sound science and advancing the field of infectious diseases at their institutions or in their local, national or global communities. The 2026 recipient is Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, FIDSA.

Dr. Osterholm is a globally renowned epidemiologist, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and a leading expert in public health preparedness, emerging infectious diseases and biosecurity. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Osterholm has exemplified scientific excellence and extraordinary courage.

In early 2025, Dr. Osterholm and colleagues founded the Vaccine Integrity Project, dedicated to safeguarding vaccine use in the U.S. He challenged his team to ask hard questions, follow the evidence and communicate conclusions to stakeholders and the public with clarity and integrity. Through this platform, Dr. Osterholm brought together voices across divides to focus on science and evidence. The findings of their systematic review of COVID-19, RSV and influenza vaccines, which supported the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2025. The project has conducted more recent reviews of Tdap vaccine in pregnancy, HPV vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and the 2026-2027 respiratory season vaccines.

Dr. Osterholm has been appointed to roles in every presidential Administration from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden. In November 2020, he was appointed to President-Elect Biden’s Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board and became one of the nation’s most trusted voices, communicating uncertainty without minimizing risk. He was recently named to TIME’s 2026 TIME100 health list of the world’s 100 most influential leaders in health.

For his extensive and fearless work in shaping modern applied epidemiology and his impactful responses to global threats, IDSA is pleased to recognize Dr. Osterholm with the 2026 Anthony Fauci Courage in Leadership Award.

Catherine Wilfert Clinical Teacher Award: Rocío Hurtado, MD, DTM&H, FIDSA
Newly named in honor of the late Catherine Wilfert, MD, FIDSA, a past president of IDSA, this award recognizes a career involved in teaching clinical infectious diseases to fellows, residents or medical students and recognizes excellence as a clinician and motivation to teach the next generation. A pioneer in HIV prevention and a relentless advocate for the treatment and prevention of HIV in infants, Dr. Wilfert was a mentor to hundreds of physicians globally. This 2026 award goes to Rocío Hurtado, MD, DTM&H, FIDSA.

Dr. Hurtado is an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, the founder and director of the MGH Mycobacterial Center, and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her career as a clinical educator has focused on complex mycobacterial infections and tropical medicine, domestically and internationally.

Dr. Hurtado has been committed to the mentorship and career development of ID fellows at Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital for over two decades and has trained all MGH and Brigham fellows in mycobacterial diseases, co-directed their annual parasitology course and established the advanced mycobacterial preceptorship.

Originally from Peru, Dr. Hurtado has conducted global health work overseas in Peru, South Africa, Ethiopia and Cambodia in drug-resistant tuberculosis. She is keenly aware of the impact of poverty and health disparities on health outcomes for some of the most marginalized communities afflicted with MDR and XDRTB overseas, with high rates of HIV coinfection and severe malnutrition.

Domestically, in addition to consultative care for patients with refractory mycobacterial disease, she maintains a large HIV primary care panel, which she cares for jointly with her fellows, serving a sizeable Latino and Portuguese-speaking population with numerous social determinants of health. Her trainees and mentees repeatedly remark on Dr. Hurtado’s diagnostic acumen and her practice of medicine guided by compassion, humanity and advocacy; her sincere love for patients; and her availability to consult with colleagues facing complex clinical scenarios even while overseas.

Dr. Hurtado exemplifies the true spirit of the Catherine Wilfert Clinical Teacher Award with an unwavering dedication to patient care, education and collaboration, and IDSA is proud to honor her with this award in 2026.

Community Clinician Award: Mark J. Dougherty, MD
This award recognizes clinicians providing high-quality care, innovation or leadership in private practice, multispecialty groups or hospital-employed settings. This year the award goes to Mark J. Dougherty, MD.

Dr. Dougherty, who founded Lexington Infectious Disease Consultants in 1990 and remains its managing partner, is an outstanding infectious diseases physician in the central Kentucky area and a well-known resource in the local medical community. He serves as the hospital epidemiologist at Baptist Health Lexington and is co-director of that facility’s antimicrobial stewardship service.

Dr. Dougherty goes above and beyond to care for patients and improve the health of his community. Recognizing the critical role ID specialists play in care transitions and hospital avoidance, he developed a comprehensive acute outpatient treatment program that has enabled thousands of patients with serious infections to receive advanced therapies in outpatient clinics or at home, avoiding hospitalization when appropriate. He has shared this successful model nationally through lectures and educational programs sponsored by IDSA and other organizations.

Under his guidance, LIDC has grown into a thriving 15-provider, independent practice serving as a tertiary referral center for infectious diseases. LIDC features a dedicated outpatient antibiotic infusion center that operates daily, an outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy program and vascular access nurses to place peripherally inserted central catheters in area hospitals.

Shortly after founding his practice, Dr. Dougherty established a mentorship program designed to provide aspiring health care professionals with clinical experience. He leads a monthly city-wide ID conference attended by physicians, pharmacists and microbiology professionals from nearby hospital systems. He has participated in several clinical trials evaluating vaccines and therapeutics for a broad range of infectious diseases.

IDSA is proud to present Dr. Dougherty with the 2026 Community Clinician Award for his extensive work to improve ID patient care in his community.

D.A. Henderson Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Health: Daniel B. Jernigan, MD, MPH
This award recognizes a lifetime of achievement in public health. This year’s honoree is Daniel B. Jernigan, MD, MPH. 

Dr. Jernigan is an internationally recognized and influential public health leader with extensive contributions in medical epidemiology, complex outbreak response and infectious diseases prevention. During a 31-year career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he fundamentally strengthened the nation’s ability to detect, understand, and respond to existing and emerging pathogens. Dr. Jernigan exemplifies decisive yet humble leadership grounded in personal integrity.

Currently a contributing scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Jernigan spent more than three decades at CDC, most recently as director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. In that role, Dr. Jernigan was responsible for a broad portfolio of ID threats, including viral hemorrhagic fevers and other high-consequence pathogens and infections. He oversaw innovative programs for genomic sequencing and for supporting state health departments. He also spent 15 years in leadership at CDC’s Influenza Division, serving as director for six years.

The author of over 160 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, Dr. Jernigan has supervised outbreak investigations of viral, bacterial and fungal infections associated with emerging and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. He led multiple epidemiology and surveillance teams for national and international responses, including the 2001 bioterrorism-related anthrax emergency, 2002 emergence of West Nile virus, 2003 SARS epidemic, 2005 Hurricane Katrina evacuee health response, 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, 2013 MERS investigation, 2014-2015 Ebola global epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic.

IDSA is proud to present Dr. Jernigan the 2026 D.A. Henderson Award for his scientific rigor, visionary leadership, dedicated service and impressive contributions toward improving public health.

Dorothy Horstmann Society Citation Award: Jonathan Vilasier Iralu, MD, MACP, FIDSA
The Dorothy Horstmann Society Citation Award is a discretionary award given in recognition of an exemplary contribution to IDSA, an outstanding discovery in the field of ID or a lifetime of outstanding achievement. Newly renamed, the award honors the memory of Dorothy Horstmann, MD, FIDSA, a virologist, epidemiologist and pediatrician whose research helped pave the way for the development of a polio vaccine. She was the first woman to serve as IDSA’s president. This year, IDSA presents the award to Jonathan Vilasier Iralu, MD, MACP, FIDSA.

A leading figure in combating infectious diseases among Native American populations, Dr. Iralu served for 32 years at Gallup Indian Medical Center in New Mexico as an infectious diseases consultant for the Navajo Area Indian Health Service. He also served for many years on the national level as the Indian Health Service chief clinical consultant for infectious diseases, retiring earlier this year. In addition to his contributions in the areas of HIV, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease elimination, Dr. Iralu devoted time to IHS clinician education and rural and urban unhoused infectious disease care delivery.

Dr. Iralu’s work has been especially impactful in the Navajo Nation, where he focused on improving outcomes for patients with HIV and TB. Dr. Iralu helped establish comprehensive, community-based treatment programs that significantly improved survival rates and quality of life for patients.

Dr. Iralu led the development of culturally sensitive HIV care models tailored to Native communities with an emphasis on patient education, stigma reduction and community engagement. He developed programs integrating modern antiretroviral therapies with local health systems, ensuring that patients receive consistent, long-term care despite geographic and socioeconomic barriers.

An influential educator and mentor, Dr. Iralu trained many health care professionals within the IHS system, including through the development of Project ECHO communities of practice. His research and development work has informed best practices for rural health care delivery and has been cited as a model for addressing health disparities in marginalized communities.

For his years of service, innovation and his extensive work that made a profound impact on Native American health, IDSA is pleased to honor Dr. Iralu with a Dorothy Horstmann Society Citation Award.

Oswald Avery Award for Early Achievement: Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FCCM, FSHEA  
This award recognizes outstanding achievement in an area of infectious diseases by an IDSA member or fellow who is 45 or younger (on Dec. 31 of the year preceding the IDWeek at which the award is given). The award is based on overall achievement, not usually a single study. This year’s recipient is Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FCCM, FSHEA.

Dr. Rhee, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a dual-boarded infectious diseases and critical care physician, is internationally recognized for his transformative contributions to sepsis surveillance and management. He has generated foundational insights that advanced the understanding of sepsis epidemiology and shaped clinical practice, public health and health care policy.

His early work demonstrated that much of the widely reported rise in sepsis incidence reflected evolving diagnostic and coding practices rather than true changes in disease burden. He subsequently led the development and validation of EHR-based methods for sepsis surveillance using objective clinical markers of infection and organ dysfunction. This work produced the first national estimates of sepsis incidence, outcomes, and trends using clinical data and informed CDC’s Adult Sepsis Event framework.

Dr. Rhee, who served as a key member of the IDSA Sepsis Task Force, has made seminal contributions to understanding the preventability of sepsis-associated deaths in U.S. hospitals, establishing hospital-onset sepsis as a major target for surveillance and quality improvement, elucidating the clinical heterogeneity of sepsis, and advancing more precise antimicrobial therapy through studies of how antibiotic use, spectrum and timing influence patient outcomes.

Dr. Rhee currently leads CDC- and CMS-supported efforts to build on the Adult Sepsis Event framework to develop the nation’s first digital sepsis outcome measure for hospital benchmarking. In 2025, he founded the Center for Sepsis Epidemiology and Prevention Studies at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.

For the breadth, originality and impact of his contributions, IDSA is pleased to recognize Dr. Rhee with the 2026 Oswald Avery Award for Early Achievement.

Walter E. Stamm Mentor Award: Anna Wald, MD, MPH, FIDSA 
This award recognizes individuals who have served as exemplary mentors. It is presented to an IDSA member or fellow who has been exceptional in guiding the professional growth of ID. This year’s honoree is Anna Wald, MD, MPH, FIDSA.

A physician-scientist and inspirational mentor, Dr. Wald is an exceptional administrator, communicator and advisor to all levels of faculty. She has focused her research on herpes simplex virus infection. For many years, she directed the University of Washington Virology Research Clinic. Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS CoV-2 studies have become an important component of Dr. Wald’s research portfolio, and her research clinic was selected to join the Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium as a Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.

Dr. Wald headed the Division of Allergy & Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine from 2017 to 2026, stepping away from this administrative role this past summer. While conducting large-scale efforts related to HSV infections, Dr. Wald has continually prioritized mentoring, having taken over leadership of the hugely impactful T32 NIH training grant.

Dr. Wald has leveraged her training skills to help advance the careers of undergraduates, predoctoral students, fellows, faculty and administrative staff, covering the fields of medicine, epidemiology and public health. Possessing a unique ability to put mentees at ease, Dr. Wald has established diverse multidisciplinary research teams to welcome trainees with diverse backgrounds into the research community. She has worked both nationally and internationally, including teaching manuscript and grant workshops for trainees in Nairobi and Uganda.

A member of CDC’s STD Guidelines Committee since 1997, Dr. Wald led the HSV treatment guidelines discussions. She was awarded the prestigious K24 mentor award grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In recognition of her extraordinary dedication to mentoring and developing future leaders, IDSA is proud to recognize Dr. Wald with the 2026 Walter E. Stamm Mentor Award.

Watanakunakorn Clinician Award: John C. Christenson, MD, FIDSA
This award recognizes IDSA members for their outstanding achievement in the clinical practice of ID. This year the award goes to John C. Christenson, MD, FIDSA.

A clinician-educator and professor emeritus at the Indiana University School of Medicine Ryan White Center for Pediatric Infectious Disease and Global Health, Dr. Christenson has had a distinguished track record of teaching and mentorship throughout a 38-year career as a pediatric infectious diseases clinician. Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Christenson established the pediatric ID fellowship at Riley Hospital for Children in 2016 and, as its founding fellowship director, laid the foundation for training future leaders in the field.

Dr. Christenson has a reputation for selflessness and generosity and serves as a role model providing optimal clinical care, frequently teaching by example.

An internationally known expert in travel medicine, histoplasmosis and infection prevention, Dr. Christenson has inspired a new generation of learners to pursue these avenues. He has been a faculty advisor for over 21 fellows. He has been a leader and role model in directing the statewide pediatrics clerkship for 360 medical students annually across nine IUSM campuses. He is a highly celebrated and requested attending for pediatrics residents on the ID rotation and bestows wisdom and excitement with each consultation, influencing many to pursue ID training.

His professional expertise is also on display in his role as section team lead for histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on the Prevention and Treatment of Opportunistic Infections in Children With and Exposed to HIV.

The Society is pleased to honor Dr. Christenson with a 2026 Watanakunakorn Clinician Award for his commitment to pediatric infectious diseases care and passion for inspiring young clinicians.

For full award descriptions, recipient biographies and information about awards given to Society members this year, please visit the IDSA website. 

About IDSA
The Infectious Diseases Society of America is a global community of 13,000 clinicians, scientists and public health experts working together to solve humanity’s smallest and greatest challenges, from tiny microbes to global outbreaks. Rooted in science, committed to health equity and driven by curiosity, our compassionate and knowledgeable members safeguard the health of individuals, our communities and the world by advancing the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases. Visit idsociety.org to learn more.