Ruanne Barnabas awarded Minority Faculty Mentoring Award

Ruanne Barnabas, MD, DPhil, associate professor (Allergy and Infectious Diseases), has been awarded the 2021 Minority Faculty Mentoring Award by the UW School of Medicine Committee on Minority Faculty Advancement (CMFA).

This award recognizes the need for excellence in mentoring of under-represented faculty groups to achieve diversity and inclusion, key elements that can unleash creativity and innovation so that we can meet the health care needs of our region.

Barnabas is an Infectious Disease Physician-Scientist at the University of Washington, affiliate at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and co-Director of the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research.

Since 2011, Barnabas has served on 19 UW graduate committees and has advised over 30 other trainees from across their career spectrum on a variety of projects focused on HIV, HPV, and cervical cancer. Barnabas also actively serves on many diversity committees including for the Department of Global Health, Department of Medicine and Division of Allergy & Infectious Diseases. 

One of her nominators stated: “Ruanne inspires me to strive higher, be more compassionate and aspire to contribute meaningfully to a world which has far too much pain, inequity, and injustice”.

Another stated: “Dr. Barnabas’s mentoring is helping her students build their careers…by going above and beyond to provide or identify research opportunities and professional resources for her students.”

Originally from South Africa, Barnabas earned a PhD and MSc from the University of Oxford and her MBChB (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MD equivalent)) from the University of Cape Town.

Barnabas also holds appointments as associate professor in the Department of Global Health and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology.