Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Two physicians with a lifetime of service to the osteopathic profession and the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine have been selected as the recipients of the TCOM Founders Award and the Mary E. Luibel Service Award. Albert H. Yurvati, DO, PhD, DSc(hc), DFACOS, FICS, FAHA, CPPS, is the 2025 TCOM Founders Award recipient, and Omar Selod, DO, has been selected as the Mary E. Luibel Service Award winner. Both will be honored at TCOM’s Founder’s Day celebration on Oct. 3.
“I am incredibly honored and humbled to receive this award,” Yurvati said. “I owe so much of what I have accomplished to TCOM; it gave me the best education in the world. I have always wanted to give back as much as I could to the school that I love and I am just blown away to receive this award.”
Dr. Yurvati is the third recipient of the TCOM Founders Award, joining Dr. Russell Gamber and the inaugural winner, Dr. Michael Clearfield.
Yurvati is a 1986 TCOM graduate and is currently the Dallas Southwest Osteopathic
Physicians professor of surgery and TCOM’s chair of medical education. In 2012, he
pioneered a surgical breakthrough, the Xiphoid. He became the first surgeon in the
world to identify the xiphoid process, a cartilage structure at the tip of the breastbone,
as the source of mysterious pain for many patients, and to fix it.
His passion for excellence has been recognized nationally and internationally, as well as at UNT Health Fort Worth, where he received the 2021 Mary Luibel Distinguished Alumni Award. He received the 2012 Clyde Gallehugh, DO Memorial Award and the 2011 President’s Award for Clinical Excellence.
In 2013, he received the Orel F. Martin Medal from the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons. In 2016, he was honored by ACOS with the Guy D. Beaumont Jr. FACOS Award of Academic Excellence and in 2021 he was the recipient of the Charles L. Ballinger Distinguished Osteopathic Surgeon Award from the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons. He is the only person in the history of ACOS to receive all three of their highest awards. In 2024, he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. It is the third doctorate for Yurvati to go along with his DO and PhD degrees he received from UNT Health Fort Worth.
Yurvati has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, three book chapters and numerous abstracts. He is the recipient of more than 2.5 million in grants, including NIH, NASA, DOD and Osteopathic Heritage Foundation funding.
Dr. Omar Selod, is a physician specializing in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
who practices at PM&R Fort Worth, the clinic he founded upon completing his residency
at Baylor University Medical Center. Selod graduated from the Kansas City University
of Medicine and Biosciences in 1997 and did his internship at the Osteopathic Medical
Center of Texas in Fort Worth.
Selod holds a faculty appointment as an assistant clinical professor at TCOM, and students regularly rotate with him at his practice throughout the year.
He began PM&R Fort Worth in 2001 on his own and has seen the practice grow to have five partners, four of whom are TCOM graduates. Selod is very involved in giving back to the Fort Worth Community, as he began PM&R Charity to help patients dealing with financial hardships due to medical illness. Over the last decade, PM&R Charity has given more than $1 million to patients in need in North Texas.
He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of physicians, caring for the underserved patients of North Texas, and advocating for the representation of all races, ages, and backgrounds in organized medicine. Selod has had more than 150 medical students he has mentored go into the field of PM&R, an overwhelming majority have been students from TCOM.
Dr. Selod was the Tarrant County Medical Society President in 2024, becoming the first minority president ever of the medical society. He was awarded the Physician Mentor of the Year in 2024 by Baylor All Saints Scott & White for their residency programs and received the Barry Smith MD Award as an Outstanding Teacher by the Baylor University Medical Center Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Residency Department in 2020.
The TCOM Founders Award, previously known as the Beyer, Everett and Luibel Memorial Medal, is awarded each year by TCOM to an individual who has advanced the tenets of the osteopathic profession and has demonstrated exceptional commitment to the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine through achievements in teaching, research, or service.
Mary Luibel was the first recipient of the award, and in 1993, the award was renamed in her honor to the Mary E. Luibel Service Award. This award is bestowed upon those who have exceptional personal commitment and long-standing dedication to the advancement of the osteopathic profession. The recipient of this award is of the highest character and integrity, and a caring individual who lives by the belief that service to others is life’s highest calling.
From UNT Health Newsroom - Community by Steven Bartolotta