Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award

Dr. Anne M. Hanneken, Arts '78
La Jolla, Calif.

Before there was women’s tennis at Marquette, there was Anne. Now a vitreoretinal surgeon and an associate professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, she was the second woman in the university’s athletic history to earn a varsity letter.

That’s because she made the men’s team one year before a women’s team even existed. This experience was not only an interesting topic of conversation for years to come, but one that positively impacted her experience at Marquette and her early medical career.  It was through the tennis program that she met Chas Mulcahy, Arts ’59 and Law ’62.

“From the first day that I met him, I instantly realized that he was a visionary with a passion for the sport of tennis. He had relentless energy and enthusiasm, and promised to build a wonderful tennis program for the men and women athletes at Marquette. He kept his promise,” says Anne.

Along with her involvement as a student athlete, Anne was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the country’s oldest academic honor society, as an undergraduate. While she attended Marquette, Anne’s father was a mathematics professor.

“My friends would come up to me at the end of the day and share their experiences by retelling all the math jokes my dad had told them in class. He loved an audience and really enjoyed teaching,” recalls Anne.

Currently and in addition to her work at The Scripps Research Institute, Anne is an ophthalmologist specializing in vitreoretinal surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital in the La Jolla, Calif., community and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a Diplomat of the American Board of Ophthalmology, and an active member of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the American Society of Retina Specialists, the Retina Society and several other academic organizations.

Anne completed her medical degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin and worked after graduation in internal medicine at Chicago’s Rush Medical Center. She then moved to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to complete her residency in ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. Anne completed a clinical fellowship in vitreoretinal surgery at the Duke University Eye Center before moving to La Jolla for a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Whittier Institute for Diabetes and Endocrinology. She joined The Scripps Research Institute in 1995.