Dr. J. Justin McCormick has been named the recipient of the 2022 Walter F. Patenge Medal of Public Service Award – the highest honor from the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, named for Walter F. Patenge, the first president of the Michigan Osteopathic Medicine Advisory Board. McCormick is a University Distinguished Professor and has served for over four decades at the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine as associate dean of research and as instructor for numerous courses within the College of Osteopathic Medicine, College of Human Medicine, and the university at large.
After receiving his Ph.D. in cell physiology from Catholic Universities of America, McCormick developed focused research interests in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis. He, along with Dr. Veronica M. Maher, founded the MSU Carcinogenesis Laboratory, and were instrumental in building the D.O./Ph.D. dual degree program that has produced clinical scientists who now populate major universities in Michigan and throughout the United States.
Over the course of their time at MSU, McCormick and Maher received $33 million in competitive grant funding, mostly from the NIH's National Cancer Institute, placing them in the upper 5% of NCI-funded investigators for a 20-year period.
McCormick has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Society of Toxicology Midwest Regional Chapter Kenneth P. Dubois Award, the AOA Irvin M. Korr Award for Outstanding Basic Science Research, and the MSUCOM Research Excellence Award. He has authored or co-authored hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, monographs, review articles and book chapters, and has obtained several patents for advances in producing DNA from MRNA.
A passionate and dedicated educator, McCormick is well known for his generosity of spirit and for the time he devoted to the innumerable undergraduate, masters and medical students he advised. McCormick and Maher personally trained 42 Ph.D. students and 50 postdoctoral fellows.
McCormick will be recognized on May 10, 2022 during a special celebration.