Jayme Locke, M.D., MPH, professor in the Department of Surgery’s Transplantation Division, has been awarded the 2023 Dean’s Excellence Award in mentoring.
Dr. Locke is an abdominal transplant surgeon who specializes in innovative strategies for the transplantation of incompatible organs, disparities in access to and outcomes after solid organ transplantation, and transplantation of HIV-infected end-stage patients. Her research interests include complex statistical analysis and modeling of transplant outcomes and behavioral research focused on health disparities. She has authored more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 24 book chapters and is an NIH R01-funded investigator.
In addition, Locke is a Deputy Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation and is an editorial board member for the Annals of Surgery. She was recently inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI).
Locke began mentoring her first undergraduate student in 2013 as an assistant professor. Since that time, she has worked with 43 other mentees ranging from high school students to faculty members and all 44 have gone on to be accepted into college, medical school, master’s programs, Ph.D. programs, and/or received faculty appointments, promotions, and postdoctoral degrees. Dr. Locke has been or currently is a mentor on nine research grants including two T32s, two T35s, and one K08, funded by numerous entities including UAB, the American Society of Transplantation, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the NIH and NIDDK, the U.S. Veterans Administration, the American Kidney Fund, and others.
Locke’s tutelage, mentees have over 150 published manuscripts in high-impact journals including JAMA, Annals of Surgery, American Journal of Transplantation, and Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Her mentees have won multiple awards including the UAB Pittman Scholars Award, the American Transplant Congress Young Investigator Award, and the Cutting Edge of Transplant Young Investigator Award.
Importantly, her mentorship of faculty at UAB has extended beyond her own division to include faculty in the Departments of Pediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Medicine, along with other divisions in the Department of Surgery including Trauma & Acute Care, Vascular, and Breast & Endocrine. The Transplant Surgery Division currently has three faculty on career development awards.
Nationally, Dr. Locke serves as a mentor for the ACS Women in Surgery Committee Mentorship Program and is a Councilor-at-Large for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the Society of University Surgeons. Moreover, she has taught and mentored trainees and junior faculty through the AAS/SUS Grants Writing Course since 2019. In 2012, she developed a pipeline course for the American Transplant Congress designed to encourage medical students and residents to pursue careers in transplantation and taught the course from 2012 through 2014.
She also actively mentors faculty at three other institutions including Duke, UT-Memphis, and LSU. She mentors surgical residents from two other institutions – the University of Mississippi and Morehouse College. Her efforts have been wide-reaching and highly impactful, as further reflected by her numerous named visiting lectureships, including four specific to the mentorship of trainees at UCSF, UNC, University of Wisconsin, and Northwestern.
Dr. Locke serves as the director of the Division of Transplantation for the Department of Surgery and UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute for UAB Medicine and is the Arnold G. Diethelm MD Endowed Chair in Transplantation Surgery.
“The Dean’s Excellence Award is a phenomenal accomplishment, and we are so proud of Dr. Locke for all that she has accomplished both as a surgeon-scientist and an educator,” says Fay Fletcher Kerner Chair of the Department of Surgery Dr. Herbert Chen.