Mackenzie McDonald, MD, and Breanna Nguyen, MD, are this year’sUniversity of Pittsburgh School of Medicine recipients of the Matthew Eric Piraino Award forExcellence in Infectious Diseases. This year’s awardees have received $5,000 each and award certificates.This award was established by Matthew Eric Piraino’s family and is given to deserving University ofPittsburgh School of Medicine seniors who have shown excellence in Infectious Diseases clinicalservice and/or research. Members of the Infectious Diseases Division, several of whom provided care to Matthew during the last two years of his life, select the recipients of this award.

Dr. Mackenzie McDonald (pictured left) worked with Dr. Nowak on a pediatric inpatient Lyme disease study for her longitudinal research project. In addition, she worked with Dr. Haidar on a SARS CoV2 testing study, which was done during the early months of the pandemic. This study resulted in a paper entitled “Preprocedural SARS-CoV-2 testing to sustain medically needed health care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic: a prospective observational study” which was published in the Open Forum Infectious Diseases journal. Dr. McDonald will join the Internal Medicine Residency Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Breanna Nguyen (pictured center) rotated in the General Infectious Diseases Consult service at UPMC Presbyterian and the PACT Clinic. Additionally, she worked with Dr. Veldkamp in the Addis Clinic. Her Infectious Diseases history taking skills and physical exams were excellent. She was able to summarize complex clinical courses extremely well and demonstrated exemplary care and management of patients with complicated infections. Dr. Nguyen will join the Dermatology Residency Program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Congratulations Mackenzie and Breanna!