New Members
UT Southwestern Academy of Teachers adds new members
The UT Southwestern Academy of Teachers inducted nine outstanding educators in 2026: Sarah Baker, M.D., Maria Chahrour, Ph.D., Ramona Dorough, Ph.D., Salahuddin Kazi, M.D., Kurt Kleinschmidt, M.D., Shawn McClintock, Ph.D., Norberto Rodríguez-Báez, M.D., Staci Shearin, Ph.D., Sarah Wingfield, M.D.
SWAT members are nominated by Deans, Center Directors, Department Chairs, and current Academy members, with membership based on sustained excellence in at least two of the following areas: teaching, instructional development and curricular design, advising and mentoring, educational administration and leadership, and educational research. Members have at least seven years of teaching experience and actively participate in ongoing SWAT-related activities.
Class of 2025 inductees:
Dr. Arasaratnam is Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and a member of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine. Originally from Ascot, England, Dr. Arasaratnam holds a bachelor's degree in physiology from the University of Cambridge. He received his medical degree from the University of Oxford Medical School, where he graduated with honors, and obtained internal medicine residency training at Oxford University Hospitals. He subsequently moved to the United States to pursue further internal medicine training at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and then completed advanced training through a fellowship program in infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He also obtained a master's degree in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and infectious diseases, Dr. Arasaratnam joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2017. He pursued research training in translational viral immunology, resulting in one of the first prospective multi-virus characterizations of T cell immunity in a pediatric solid organ transplant cohort, and another study identifying dominant T cell targets of Parainfluenza virus 3.
Avneesh Chhabra, M.D., MBA, FACR
Dr. Chhabra is Professor of Radiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Chief of its Musculoskeletal Radiology Division. He also serves as Chief of Musculoskeletal Radiology at Parkland Memorial Hospital. His clinical interests include magnetic resonance neurography (MRN), sports imaging, rheumatology, infection, and sarcoma imaging, and related image-guided interventions.
Dr. Chhabra is double boarded in Radiology from Delhi University, India and Drexel University, USA and has fellowship training in in musculoskeletal radiology from Temple University. He has Executive M.B.A. in healthcare leadership and management from the University of Texas and is a certified professional coach for career and professional development. He is a clinical scholar and is a distinguished teaching professor with SHINE academy and Southwest academy of teachers (SWAT) awards.
Dr. Cleaver is Professor, Molecular Biology, and Principle Investigator for the Cleaver Lab. Born in Palo Alto, California, Dr. Cleaver grew up in Quebec, Canada. She received her B.S. in Molecular Biology and B.A. in History at UT Austin. She also earned her graduate degree at UT Austin, focusing on the role of VEGF and VEGFR2 on endothelial progenitor patterning with Dr. Paul Krieg.
She performed her postgraduate research at Harvard, in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology with Dr. Douglas Melton. She identified vascular signals important during the specification of pancreatic beta cells. Dr. Cleaver joined UT Southwestern’s Molecular Biology as faculty in late 2004 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010.
Her lab studies cell fate and how cells assemble into tissues. Her group is particularly interested in intracellular signaling events that drive cytoskeletal or adhesion changes within progenitor cells, allowing them to assemble into functional tissues. She focuses on blood vessels and on developing organs, such as the pancreas, the kidney, and the lung. She is interested in how cues in the microenvironment drive vascular assembly or growth, and how blood vessels in turn communicate paracrine, non-nutritional signals to stem cell niches.
Dr. Cao is Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Division Chief of Medical Toxicology in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Dr. Cao earned his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine. He completed a residency in emergency medicine at Carolinas Medical Center and received advanced training in medical toxicology through a fellowship at Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety.
Certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine in emergency medicine and medical toxicology, he joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2015. Dr. Cao is the Medical Director of Toxicology for the Parkland Health & Hospital System.
Adriane dela Cruz, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. dela Cruz is Associate Professor, Psychiatry, focusing on treating patients with drug and alcohol addictions.
Dr. dela Cruz earned her medical and graduate degrees at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. Following her residency in psychiatry at UT Southwestern, she completed advanced training in addiction psychiatry at UT Southwestern. Dr. dela Cruz joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2016.
In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. dela Cruz is active in research and education. Her research work has been published in journals including the Journal of Psychiatric Research and The American Journal on Addictions. She developed a curriculum for training psychiatry residents in understanding medical literature, which has been published by the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training. She received a Faculty Innovation in Education Award from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 2020-21 for her project "From 'Yeah, No' to 'Yeah, Yeah!': Development and Assessment of a Podcast to Promote Critical Evaluation of the Literature and Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry."
Dr. Green is Professor of Pediatrics. Dr. Green graduated from Baylor University in 2000 and from the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio in 2004. He completed his pediatric residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2007. Following his general pediatrics training, he completed his pediatric critical care fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2010. During his time in Boston, he completed the Program in Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2008.
He joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in 2010. Dr. Green practices in both the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) at Children’s Medical Center.
His main interest is in medical education. He has collaborated with the Educators in Pediatric Intensive Care (EPIC) research group, which conducts multicenter studies focused on medical education in pediatric critical care. He served as director of the pediatric critical care fellowship program at UT Southwestern from 2016-2023. He also serves as a member of the ethics committee at Children’s Medical Center. In 2022, he became the Assistant Designated Institutional Official (DIO) at UTSW. In 2023, he was appointed as the UTSW Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education and DIO.
Dr. Heitman is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Ethics and the Program in Ethics in Science and Medicine, with secondary appointments in the Department of Applied Clinical Research and the O'Donnell School of Public Health. Her work focuses on cultural aspects of ethics in clinical medicine, biomedical science, and public health, particularly international standards of research ethics and education in the responsible conduct of research (RCR).
Dr. Heitman teaches research ethics and RCR in the Center for Translational Medicine and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and is an ethics facilitator for medical students. She leads ethics and RCR education for two training grants on cardiovascular health disparities research through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and she is director/multiple principal investigator (MPI) of two international research ethics education grants from the Fogarty International Center. Dr. Heitman is a National Associate of the U.S. National Research Council and has been chair or member of eight U.S. National Academy of Sciences programs in research integrity education in the Middle East, North Africa, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Dr. Heitman came to UT Southwestern from Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, where she was a member of the Academy for Excellence in Teaching and served as a clinical ethics consultant and chair of the Ethics Committee for Vanderbilt University Hospital. She was previously on the faculty the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas, and was clinical ethicist at Hermann Hospital and Lyndon Baines Johnson General Hospital.
Dr. Jamshed is Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a member of the Division of Geriatric Medicine. A specialist in geriatric medicine and dementia, she serves as Medical Director of Care of the Vulnerable Elderly (COVE), UTSW's home-based primary care program. She is also the Director of the Geriatric Fellowship program.
Dr. Jamshed earned her medical degree at the Aga Khan University Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan. She completed a residency in family medicine at the Latrobe Area Hospital in Pennsylvania and received advanced training in geriatrics through a fellowship at the University of California-Los Angeles. She later completed a master's degree in healthcare management and leadership at the University of Texas at Dallas. Certified by the American Board of Family Medicine, Dr. Jamshed joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2015.
Dr. Jamshed’s research interests include population health, health policy, and teaching. Her investigations have led to a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews, and book chapters. In addition, she has presented her findings throughout the United States and around the world. At UT Southwestern, Dr. Jamshed is the Medical Director of the House Call program and she has served as chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Dr. Jamshed is a member of the American Academy of Home Care Medicine, which she serves as a member of the Education, Awards, and Governance committees, and the American Geriatrics Society, which she serves as co-chair of the Home-Based Patient Care committee.
Dr. La Hoz is Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a member of its Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine. He serves as Director of Solid Organ Transplant Infectious Diseases, Program Director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Fellowship, and Medical Director of the Transplant Services Center.
Originally from Lima, Peru, Dr. La Hoz earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and medical degree from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), graduating at the top of his class. He completed his internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he also spent a dedicated year focusing on the immunocompromised host. Prior to joining the UT Southwestern faculty in 2015, Dr. La Hoz served on the faculty at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
In 2017, Dr. La Hoz was recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation (FAST) for his commitment to the field of transplantation and his outstanding service to the society. His achievements were further acknowledged in 2019 when he was named a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (FIDSA). Since 2024, he has served as Chair of the American Society of Transplantation Infectious Diseases Community of Practice. Dr. La Hoz’s research and clinical work focus on the prevention and treatment of infectious complications in solid organ transplant recipients. He has received research funding from the UT Southwestern Center for Translational Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, and his work has been published in leading journals. In 2019, his expertise was further recognized with his appointment as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation.