Our Bureau
Charlottesville, VA
The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia has selected Dr. Neeral Shah for Virginia’s 2025 Outstanding Faculty Awards. UVA Health’s Neeral Shah, MD, is one of 12 recipients of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2025 Outstanding Faculty Awards for faculty, who exemplify the highest standards of teaching, scholarship and service.
During his 15 years at the University of Virginia, where he serves as a professor of medicine in the gastrointestinal/hepatology division, Shah has used his knowledge and skills to care for patients, research ways to improve care and educate thousands of future physicians and healthcare providers.
As a gastroenterologist and digestive health specialist, Shah has performed thousands of colonoscopies and now specializes in liver disease, caring for patients with chronic liver disease and those in need of a liver transplant.
As a researcher, Shah helped develop a better way to care for patients with liver disease who experience bleeding problems. The innovative work by Shah and collaboration with biomedical engineers led to a National Institutes of Health grant and the eventual creation of the Quantra Hemosonics machine, widely adopted by anesthesiologists to best use blood products during patient care.
As an educator, Shah played a key role in creating the UVA School of Medicine’s NxGen pre-clerkship medical education curriculum, which prepares students to be lifelong learners who provide patient-centered, evidence-based medical care. He has won every major teaching award at UVA while also developing a series of medical education infographics now used in 98% of American medical schools and 70 countries around the world.
Shah’s passion for learning and teaching came from his parents, who immigrated to the United States from India with just two suitcases and $8.
“Their philosophy was, ‘Knowledge is something that nobody can ever take from you,’ a belief they deeply instilled in me,” he said.
UVA Health is an integrated health system with a world-class academic medical center that includes a level 1 trauma center, a level IV NICU, the first NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Virginia, and UVA Health Children’s, the #1 pediatric hospital in Virginia. UVA Health also encompasses 3 community hospitals, a specialty rehabilitation hospital, and an integrated network of primary and specialty care clinics throughout Virginia.
