Distinguished Mentor Award
Tadataka Yamada, MD, AGAF
Global Health Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Seattle, Washington
The AGA honors Tadataka Yamada, MD, AGAF, president of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with its Distinguished Mentor Award, which recognizes an individual for his or her achievements as an outstanding mentor over a lifelong career.
Dr. Yamada’s approach to mentoring is based in his own intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm. He has a genuine concern for young investigators and clinicians and is always willing and eager to make the extra effort to assist fellows in the development of their careers. He has an uncanny ability to recognize someone’s particular strengths and show them how to capitalize on it. Dr. Yamada recognized the importance of career development for women and minorities before other leaders in the field, and, during his tenure, has mentored nearly 50 postdoctoral trainees from 11 different countries. Dr. Yamada embodies the finest principles of medicine and demonstrates a relentless quest for exploration, discovery and mentorship.
Dr. Yamada has been an active member of the AGA, including serving as president in 1996 and being awarded the Friedenwald Medal, AGA’s highest honor, in 2003. In recognition of his contributions to medicine and science he has been elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (US), the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and the National Academy of Medicine (Mexico). He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Distinguished Achievement Award in Gastrointestinal Physiology from the American Physiological Society, the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan and the Distinguished Medical Scientist Award from the Medical College of Virginia. Dr. Yamada has been a Member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the National Board of Medical Examiners.
A scientist and scholar in gastroenterology, Dr. Yamada is the author of more than 150 original manuscripts on the subject and is the editor of The Textbook of Gastroenterology (now in its fifth edition). The studies undertaken by Dr. Yamada and his collaborators led to basic discoveries in the post-translational processing and biological activation of peptide hormones, the structure and function of receptors for hormones regulating gastric acid secretion, and the regulation of genes involved in the acid secretory process.
The course of his career has spanned a wide array of disparate fronts from academic medicine to the pharmaceutical industry to the world of philanthropy, and he has demonstrated outstanding achievements in each arena. His excellence as an administrator in an academic setting, industry and at the largest philanthropy in the world identifies both his strength and over-arching breadth of his administrative talent. Dr. Yamada has served as the director of a very productive laboratory; chief of the division of gastroenterology and chair of the department of medicine at the University of Michigan; president of health care sciences at SmithKline Beecham; chairman and executive director at GlaxoSmithKline; and currently, president for the Global Health Program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. Yamada was born in Japan, and completed his education in the United States. He graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor of arts degree in history and obtained his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine. After completing his internal medicine training at the Medical College of Virginia he became an investigator in the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, trained in gastroenterology at the UCLA School of Medicine and assumed his first faculty position there.
