The University of Chicago Alumni Association and the Alumni Board have announced the recipients of the 2026 Alumni Awards.
The awards recognize accomplished UChicago graduates for their outstanding professional achievement, service to society and contributions to the UChicago community. This year’s honorees span a wide range of fields, including global economic policy, theoretical physics, healthcare innovation, nonprofit leadership, public service and finance.
The recipients of the Professional Achievement Award, Early Career Achievement Award, Recent Alumni Service Award, Alumni Service Medal and Alumni Service Award will be honored during Alumni Weekend from April 30 to May 3.
In addition, Prof. Emeritus Samuel Peltzman, PhD’65, will be recognized with the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching and student experience.
Learn more about the 2026 Alumni Award honorees:
Professional Achievement Award
Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, PhD’05, MBA’05, is an academic and policymaker whose scholarship and public service have enabled emerging economies to navigate crises, growth and institutional renewal. A tenured professor of finance at the Indian School of Business, he has advanced evidence-based approaches to growth, financial stability and development in the Global South.
As chief economic adviser to the Indian government, Subramanian served as the principal economic voice during the COVID-19 crisis. His three landmark Economic Surveys of India shaped national discourse on post-pandemic recovery and laid the intellectual foundation for India’s approach to self-reliance, anchored in competitive markets, policy autonomy and inclusive growth. Subsequently, as India’s executive director at the International Monetary Fund, he brought analytical independence and conviction-driven leadership to foster evidence-based reflection while leading the fund’s engagement with South Asia during periods of acute economic stress. Through his engagement with multilateral institutions, best-selling books and public discourse, he has sought to advance analytical rigor and fairness in global economic policy. Subramanian also earned degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
Richard “Dick” Chandler, MBA’66, also earned degrees from Princeton University and Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain, all with honors. For 12 years, he worked in corporate America for Bell & Howell and later Sara Lee Corporation. He then led three venture-funded start-ups. Sunrise Medical, which he founded in 1983, became a leading global manufacturer of rehabilitation and respiratory equipment with distribution in 100+ countries and a New York Stock Exchange listing when it was sold to private equity in 2000.
In 2003, Chandler became an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Montana business schools. Over the next 18 years, he taught MBA courses in entrepreneurship and more, for which he was voted outstanding professor by five UC Irvine graduating classes.
In 2017 a Princeton classmate asked Chandler to support a start-up non-governmental organization called Bulamu Healthcare International that operated pop-up medical camps in Uganda. It provided free primary healthcare for the rural poor using only locally trained and licensed Ugandan clinicians. Sadly, a few weeks after Chandler agreed to join the board, his classmate unexpectedly passed away, and he found himself as Bulamu’s first CEO.
Over the next eight years, Bulamu annual revenues grew from $100,000 in 2016 to $7 million in 2025. During that period, it provided free primary care to 288,000 Ugandans, performed free surgeries for 15,000 patients and trained health workers while supplying neonatal care equipment in 104 government maternity hospitals. Chandler applied basic management disciplines novel in Uganda that produced dramatic improvements in patient care and saved many lives.
John E. Milad, AB’94, has made a significant impact on healthcare innovation through his leadership of life sciences companies, venture investments in medical technologies and commitment to improving patient outcomes.
As CEO and co-founder of Quanta Dialysis Technologies, he led the development and global launch of an award-winning portable hemodialysis system that is transforming kidney care delivery for patients with end-stage kidney disease. His leadership has fostered companies that serve millions of patients.
Milad studied political science at UChicago and, after working on Wall Street, moved to the United Kingdom, where he has lived for the past 25 years. At Quanta, he secured the largest venture funding round ever in his industry and built a transatlantic team of almost 300 people across the U.K. and United States. He currently serves as CEO of ERS Genomics, the global licensing leader for Nobel-Prize-winning CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology.
He is a recipient of the MacRobert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the U.K.'s most prestigious prize for engineering innovation, and was named to the Sunday Times list of top "Game-Changing Innovators and Entrepreneurs." Milad served for six years on the Invention for Innovation (i4i) selection committee for the British National Institute for Health Research, evaluating translational research funding for medical innovation. He serves as a non-executive director at Northern Venture Trust plc and as a trustee of Kidney Research UK.
Marc Kamionkowski, PhD’91, is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2011.
Before that, he was on the faculty of Columbia University and then the California Institute of Technology, where he was the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics. He is a theoretical physicist who has worked on a broad range of topics in theoretical astrophysics, cosmology and particle theory.
Kamionkowski is known for early work on the possibility that dark matter could be composed of elementary particles and more recent work on the hypothesis that the dark matter may be black holes. He has made important contributions to the study of dark energy in the late and early universe. His work on the cosmic microwave background polarization is widely credited for helping provide the science case for a suite of increasingly precise experiments that have over the past quarter century revolutionized our understanding of the early universe. He is also known for the many students and postdocs he has mentored over the years.
Early Career Achievement Award
William Godwin, JD’10, serves as senior advisor to the Calumet Township Trustee and principal of Garard Strategies LLC, a pro-social external affairs consulting firm. In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed him a White House fellow, leading Godwin to serve in the Executive Office of the President until 2024. In September 2025, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton appointed him a commissioner on the Gary/Chicago International Airport Board. From 2020 until 2023, he served as president of the Gary City Council and 1st district councilman. He is the founder and managing broker of Godwin Realty Company, a real estate brokerage licensed in Indiana and Illinois.
Previously, he served as a commissioner on the Gary Port Authority, board president of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, and external affairs manager at the non-profit Communities In Schools of Chicago. He served as associate vice-chancellor of Workforce & Economic Development at City Colleges of Chicago, managing district-wide workforce partnerships. A native of Jackson, Tenn., William earned his B.A. in sociology, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University, and completed the year-long General Course at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He also earned a master’s degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. William is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education leadership and policy studies at Howard University. He is an attorney member of the Illinois State Bar Association.
Recent Alumni Service Award
Olivia Miller, AB’21, is co-president of the Chicago Women’s Alliance (CWA), an affinity group for UChicago alumni and friends. Throughout her time on the Board, Miller has had extensive involvement in CWA’s programming and events. Her events are widely attended and engage hundreds of diverse alumni through intellectual and social activities, often offering alumni the opportunity to share their expertise and teach others. In particular, Miller is passionate about engaging recent alumni in University initiatives. As a leader in UChicago’s new Alumni Amplify program, she leverages social media to cultivate online engagement among recent alumni from all around the globe. Miller also enjoys encouraging community within the College as co-chair for her 5th Reunion.
Outside of her volunteer work with the University, Miller is an Associate on Morgan Stanley’s ultra-high-net-worth lending team in New York City. Miller is honored to come back home to UChicago in her next chapter as an MBA candidate at the Booth School of Business.
Alumni Service Medal
Jeffrey Schvimer, AB’79, MBA’86, studied English language and literature before attending Chicago Booth and specializing in finance with a concentration in statistics. Schvimer has a long history of service to the University. He has served on several reunion committees, including as a co-chair. He also served seven years on the Alumni Board, including as its president. During his time on the Executive Committee, he was part of the leadership team that reorganized and redirected the mission of the board. He has also served on the Alumni Schools Committee interviewing prospective students. Schvimer has volunteered in several other ways when the University has called, such as in speaking engagements, mentoring and career counseling.
His primary career was in both institutional and high-net-worth investment management with Morgan Stanley, Mesirow Financial and PNC Bank. He ended his investment career in 2018 as investment director for PNC in Chicago and the Midwest. Thereafter, Schvimer served as chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Oodles, a startup company founded by another former UChicago alum, in which he had been a seed investor. Now retired, he spends his time writing, volunteering and playing golf.
Alumni Service Award
Lara Druyan, AB’89, serves on the advisory council of the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. Previously, she served on the University’s Alumni Board, where she was a member of the Executive Committee and chaired the Awards Committee. Druyan has also been a long-standing member of the San Francisco Bay Area Leadership Council, which supports College students’ job searches for summer internships and full-time opportunities. Her service to the University began immediately after college graduation, when she headed alumni interviewing in the Bay Area for two years—she continues to work closely with college admissions, serving as an active ambassador in the community. She has also helped launch the Chicago Society in the Bay Area, judged the New Venture Competition and has served on every reunion committee since her 10th, co-chairing her 30th.
Lara is a founding general partner of secondary investment fund Private Liquidity Partners, and a venture partner at Silicon Valley Data Capital, a seed- and early-stage venture firm, where she served as a managing director for five years. Previously, she was the managing director and head of innovation at the Royal Bank of Canada. Druyan also serves on the boards of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Bancorp USA, Healogix, an analytics and research firm in the health care sector, and Synfini, a computational chemistry start-up. She is also a member of Astia’s Investor Council, which promotes female entrepreneurship. Druyan graduated with honors from UChicago and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
