2026 Winner is David A. Piccoli, MD

Dr. Piccoli is Professor Emeritus CE and Division Chief Emeritus for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, among other roles he has taken at CHOP over the past 43 years. 

He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (1975) and Harvard Medical School (1979). He was a Resident and Chief Resident in Pediatrics at Children's Hospital, Boston and then completed his clinical and research fellowships at CHOP. He became Training Director, Section Chief, Interim Chief (1996), and in 1998 Division Chief. He was the Director of the Biesecker Pediatric Liver Center and held the Biesecker Endowed Chair for 20 years. In addition to Hepatology, Dr. Piccoli has been active in the CHOP Frontier Programs in IBD and in Motility Disorders. He had been an Associate Chair (Outreach, Information Technology) of the Department of Pediatrics from 1996-2022. He has been the co-director of the Penn-CHOP Joint Center for Digestive, Liver and Pancreatic Diseases. During Dr. Piccoli’s 28 year tenure as Chief, the Division quintupled in size and vastly expanded its clinical and research missions. 

Dr. Piccoli’s main areas of clinical and research interest are metabolic and genetic liver diseases, and inflammatory bowel diseases. He developed an early interest in syndromic bile duct paucity and assembled the team that discovered Jagged1 and NOTCH2 as the causes of Alagille Syndrome (ALGS).

Dr. Piccoli has authored over 200 papers, chapters, and reviews, and edited 4 books on areas of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition.

Over his nearly 50 year career, Dr. Piccoli has received a number of awards for his clinical care, teaching, mentorship, research, and work with charitable foundations, including most recently induction into the Academy of Master Clinicians at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Murray Davidson Award given by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition.  At CHOP, his awards have included Fellow Teacher of the Year, Faculty Teacher of the Year, the Jean Cortner Divisional Teaching Award, and the Faculty Mentor Award.

Dr. Piccoli collaborated closely with Dr. Pasquariello over the decades on topics ranging from complex undiagnosed pediatric diseases to the nuances of Sunday gravy, passing the former to his fellows and the latter to his three marvelous children, Matthew, Cara and Laura.

Past awardees

• 2025 – Caroline A. Pasquariello, MD, FAAP, FCPP
• 2024 – Soroosh Mahboubi, MD
• 2023 – Patrick S. Pasquariello, Jr.