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UIC Distinguished Professor Award

Learn more about the UIC Distinguished Professorship.

Announcing 2025-26 UIC Distinguished Professors

The UIC Distinguished Professorship was created to recruit and recognize persons who have made a significant impact upon their field through scholarship, creativity, and leadership.

Luisa DiPietro

Luisa DiPietro

Department of Periodontics
College of Dentistry

Luisa DiPietro, DDS, PhD is Professor and Founding Director of Wound Healing and Tissue Regeneration in the Department of Periodontics, College of Dentistry at the University of Illinois Chicago. An elected Fellow of the AAAS, her pioneering and transformative research has markedly advanced knowledge on the mechanisms of wound healing, particularly in the interplay of inflammation, angiogenesis and scar formation that have laid the groundwork for novel therapeutic strategies.

Deepak Shukla

Deepak Shukla

Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science
College of Medicine

Deepak Shukla, PhD is the John H. Panton Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. A world-renowned molecular virologist with expertise in herpesviruses, his research contributed to the discovery of HSV-1 entry receptors, establishing a link between HSV-1 and several ocular diseases. This work led to new designs for nanoparticle vaccines against herpes simplex viruses and development of small molecule inhibitors to provide novel therapeutic approaches for herpes infections.

Mikhail Stephanov

Mikhail Stephanov

Department of Physics
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Mikhail Stephanov, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Physics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois Chicago. An internationally renowned theoretical physicist, his research has made pioneering contributions to quantum chromodynamics that have profoundly influenced the understanding of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions. His predictions of new phenomena during collisions of atoms at ultra-high speeds have inspired experimentalists for over a quarter century, resulting in a massive upgrade of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and enabling active experimental programs at this site.

Terry Vanden Hoek

Terry Vanden Hoek

Department of Emergency Medicine
College of Medicine

Terry Vanden Hoek, MD is the Earl M. Bane Professor and Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine, College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, his basic and translational research has pioneered new insights into ischemic/perfusion injury and discovered mechanistic pathways that have directly led to successful time-sensitive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) of patients to improve cardiac arrest survival and neurological outcomes.

Past UIC Distinguished Professor Award Recipients