UCSF associate professor and SFVAHCS psychologist Samuel Wan, PhD, (right) receives the 2024 Russell B. Lemle Psychology Leadership Award from the award's namesake during the 27th annual VA Psychology Leadership Conference. [Photo: Ron Gironda/AVAPL]
UC San Francisco faculty member and San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS) psychologist Samuel Wan, PhD, was recognized by the Association of VA Psychologist Leaders (AVAPL) with the group's 2024 Russell B. Lemle Psychology Leadership Award. He was presented with the award on Thursday, May 9, 2024, during AVAPL's 27th annual VA Psychology Leadership Conference in Washington, DC.
The honor is given each year by AVAPL to honor those who build VA psychology communities, empower psychologists to encourage and care for one another, and promote leadership development to ultimately improve mental health care for the veterans they serve. It is named after longtime UCSF faculty member and former SFVAHCS Chief Psychologist Russell B. Lemle, PhD, who received the inaugural award in 2017 and was on hand to present this year's award to his colleague.
Wan is a health sciences associate clinical professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the associate chief for mental health education at SFVAHCS. He has directed the SFVAHCS Clinical Psychology Postdoctoral Residency Program since 2014. He has also served in a number of key roles with AVAPL, including six years on the group's executive board and three years as a conference chair.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
