Archived News

2023

  • Congratulations to Vihar Patel, M.D., for his engagement with high school students in the Viasalia Unified School District. Patel is committed to promoting Pathology and other health care related opportunities with students of all ages.
  • Congratulations to Distinguished Professor Yvonne Wan and colleagues for their recent publication in Molecular Therapy titled: "miR-22 Gene Therapy Treats HCC by Promoting Anti-tumor Immunity and Enhancing Metabolism". This publication has received quite a bit of attention including being highlighted in the September 15th issue of the Cancer Letter (PDF).
  • Yicheng Lou was the first place winner at the annual Hugh Edmondson Research Internship scientific poster session for her project titled, “Method Development for Proteomic Host Profiling of Adult Patients with Suspected Infection and Sepsis.” Ms. Lou was mentored by Professor Nam Tran, Senior Clinical Pathology Director. Yutong Shao, mentored by Neuropathology Director Lee-Way Jin, M.D., Ph.D., won second place for her poster, “SIMOA Quantification of Alzheimer’s Disease Biomarkers in Plasma.” The nine undergraduate interns wrapped up their summer session with mentors, family and friends as they presented their projects and answered questions. Former UC Davis Pathology Chair Robert Cardiff, M.D., co-founder of the Edmondson program, shared remarks, while Interim Chair Kuang-Yu Jen, M.D., Ph.D. and Edmondson Director Farzad Fereidouni, Ph.D. awarded achievement certificates.
  • Former chief resident Alex Ladenheim and other UC Davis Health colleagues have been chosen for the Third Place Junior Member Abstract Award by the College of American Pathologists for their poster presentation “Removing Race From the Calculation of Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate: Outcomes”. They will be formally recognized at the 2023 Honors in Pathology ceremony on Sunday, October 8, 2023 at the CAP23 Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
  • Associate Professor Elham Vali Betts and Associate Dean Kristin Olson gave a presentation “Teaching Modalities at University of California, Davis School of Medicine” at the Association of Pathology Chairs annual meeting in Chicago on Monday July 17, 2023.
  • Distinguished Professor emerita and Chair emerita Lydia P. Howell, M.D., has been appointed as the first deputy director of the Association of Pathology Chairs. Howell is a Past President of the APC, Past President of the American Society of Cytopathology, and former Medical Director of the UC Davis Health clinical laboratories. Read the full article » (PDF)
  • Professor Kuang-yu Jen has been appointed interim chair of the department, effective July 1, 2023, following the retirement of chair Lydia Howell. Howell served as chair for 13 years and will become the first Deputy Director of the Association of Pathology Chairs.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green has been funded as a consultant on a new NIH grants with Principle Investigator Rebecca Schmidt from the MIND Institute, “Prenatal Environment and Child Health (PEACH) in ECHO.” This work will examine disparities in periconceptional folate status and environmental exposures in relation to downstream child health and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
  • Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni was one of six finalists for the Chancellor’s 2023 Innovator of the Year Award for developing novel slide-free microscopy methods. This award recognizes faculty, staff or teams whose innovative or entrepreneurial activities have had a measurable societal impact in the last year, or those whose activities or achievements in the last year have a very strong potential to make a significant impact in the future.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson served as the major professor for UC Davis’ 19 year old Ph.D. graduate, Tanishq Abraham, one of the youngest Ph.D.s in the world. Levenson mentored Abraham in work for his graduate thesis applying artificial intelligence to novel slide-free digital microscopy.
  • Professor Alexander (Sandy) Borowsky, along with department faculty members Richard Levenson, Kurt Schaberg, and Farzad Fereidouni, published a pilot study validating a UC Davis-developed slide-free digital imaging system for pathology diagnosis in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
  • Many department members were honored with awards at the annual housestaff graduation.  Professionalism awards were given to resident Anupam Mitra, staff member Shawn Jackson, faculty member Nam Tran. Teaching awards were given to fellow Anna Lee Clarke, lab staff member Christine Wu, faculty member Elham Vali Betts, and volunteer faculty member Jason Tovar.
  • Associate Professor Kristin Grimsrud received an Academic Senate Research Award for $25,000.
  • Medical school graduate Joel Hernandez received the 2023 Stowell Award for Outstanding Performance in Pathology at commencement.
  • UC Davis residency and fellowship graduate Professor M. Shahriar Salamat, M.D., Ph.D., was chosen for the department’s 2023 Distinguished Alumnus Award. Salamat serves as the Director of Neuropathology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He will deliver the graduation address at the housestaff graduation dinner on June 9, 2023.
  • The 2023 Dean’s Team Award for Excellence in Inclusion was awarded to the multi-disciplinary team led by pathology department members for their multi-year project that removed race-based laboratory reference ranges for eGFR calculations. Pathology team members included Professor Nam Tran (team leader), resident Alex Ladenheim, informatics fellow Clayton LaValley, and laboratory specialist Kathy Dagang. Other team members are Internal Medicine faculty Baback Roshanravan, Brian Young, and Rachael Lucatorto; Jann Murray-Garcia from School of Nursing, and IT analyst LaShea Stubblefield.
  • Associate Professor Kurt Schaberg delivered Grand Rounds as a guest lecturer at the Cleveland Clinic on May 4, 2023 on “Gastroenterologists are from Mars and Pathologists are from Venous: Diagnostic reporting in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (and Kurt’s Notes!)”
  • The Renal Pathology Society posted an interview with UC Davis Health's Renal Pathology Director, Professor Kuang-yu Jen, to celebrate Asian-Pacific Islander Month. Jen is Treasurer of the Renal Pathology Society.
  • Recent collaborative publications involving department faculty and colleagues from the College of Engineering include "Convection and Extra-cellular Matrix Binding Control of Interstitial Extracellular Vesicles" in the April 2023 issue of Journal of Extracellular Vesicles involving Professor Alexander "Sandy" Borowsky, and "Intraoperative Detection of IHD-Mutant Glioma Using Fluorescent Lifetime Imaging" in the April 2023 issue of Journal of Biophotonics with neuropathologists Han Sung Lee and Lee-Way Jin.
  • Professor and Director of Neuropathology Lee-way Jin was a co-author in a multi-institutional publication in the April issue of the journal Aging and Disease, "Aging, Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor 1, Brain Cell Senescence, and Alzheimer’s Disease".
  • Associate Professors Karen Matsukuma and Dorina Gui published a comprehensive review “Hirschsprung Disease for the Practicing Surgical Pathologist” in the March issue of American Journal of Clinical Pathology.
  • Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni received a $3.1M NIH grant for his project "GigaFIBI: Rapid Large Format Histology-Resolution Imaging for Intra-operative Assessment of Breast Lumpectomy Margins."
  • Kristin Olson, M.D., Vice Chair for Education and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Medical Student Education, represented our department and specialty along with other pathology educational leaders at the Virtual Specialty Forum for medical students sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges on March 23, 2023.
  • Professor emeritus Gerald Kost has been appointed to a three-year term on the FDA's Hematology and Pathology Device Panel.
  • Associate Professor Brittany Dugger and members of her lab conducted a "Brains to Classroom" program in March 2023 for fourth graders at the Language Academy of Sacramento, a Spanish language immersion school in one of the neighborhoods served by UC Davis Health's Anchor Institution Mission for Community Health.
  • Four outstanding new residents matched to the department on Match Day, March 17: Alex Chau (Touro Univ., Nevada), Erdembileg Chuluunderdene (American Univ., Caribbean), Lorene Chung (Albany Medical College), Sarah Hoffman (Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine).
  • Vice Chair of Research Yu-jui Yvonne Wan is an invited speaker at the 2023 American Physiology Summit on April 20-23, 2023 in Long Beach, CA on "Gut Microbiota and Tumorigenesis Leading to Drug Discovery for Liver Cancer Treatment."
  • Rebeca Scalco Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Associate Professor Brittany Dugger, is the recipient of UC Davis’ 2023 Postdoctoral Excellence Award. The award was presented at the annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium on March 17, 2023.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson was a featured speaker in two sessions at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans, March 11-16, 2023. He spoke on “Combining Optics Technological Innovations with Artificial Intelligence” at the companion meeting for the American Association of Cancer Research. He also served as faculty in the Long Course, “Next Generation Pathology: Technological Advances in Anatomic Pathology".
  • Posters at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting on March 11-16, 2023 in New Orleans shared work by department faculty: “Enteroblastic, Hepatoid, and Clear Cell Adenocarcinoma of the Colorectum Show Significant Morphologic Overlap but Demonstrate Some Clinical Differences” included co-author Associate Professor Karen Matsukuma, and “Automated Whole Slide Imaging Collagen Analysis for Fibrosis Quantification Using deep-DUET” by co-authors Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni, and Professors Kuang-yu Jen and Richard Levenson.
  • The annual UC Davis Health Quality Forum on March 16, 2023 featured three presentations from the department. Transfusion Director and Associate Professor Sarah Barnhard gave an oral presentation on “RBC Aliquoting: Improving O Neg RBC Utilization in Neonates and Children.” Assistant Professor Ananya Datta Mitra and the molecular team presented a poster on “Diagnostic accuracy of the Cobas 6800 RT-PCR assay for detection of BK virus” and Clinical Pathology Director Professor Nam Tran and the chemistry team shared a poster “Validation and Implementation of Cystatin C for Renal Function Monitoring.”
  • On March 9-10, Distinguished Professor Ralph Green hosted global nutrition experts for an on-campus two day conference, “2023 UC Davis/Quadram Collaboration on Biofortification, B12, and More: from Nutrition to Food Biotechnology” to develop international partnerships and collaborations to improve health through nutrition.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson published a thought-provoking article “AI in Pathology: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” in the March 2023 issue of Seminars in Diagnostic Pathology.
  • The 2022 Research Highlights of the National Cancer Institute’s Epidemiology and Genomic Research Program included an article co-authored by Assistant Professor Dongguang Wei, "Multiregional Sequencing Analysis Reveals Extensive Genetic Heterogeneity in Gastric Tumors from Latinos" and other UC Davis faculty which was published in Cancer Research Communications.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yu-jui Yvonne Wan and her team published a study in the February 2023 issue of Biomarker Research, “The essential roles of FXR in diet and age influenced metabolic changes and liver disease development: a multi-omics study.”
  • Assistant Professor Morgan Darrow was among the authors in a recent article “Human soft tissue sarcomas harbor an intratumoral viral microbiome which is linked with natural killer cell infiltrate and prognosis" which was published in Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. Oncologic surgeon Robert Canter was the senior author.
  • Histology supervisor Milo Hobbs is serving on the grading team for the national Histology Quality Improvement Program (HistoQIP) study sponsored by the National Society for Histotechnology (nsh.org) and the College of American Pathologists. The primary emphasis of the program is to improve the quality of histologic preparations routinely performed in the histology laboratory through education.
  • Faculty members Nam Tran, David Unold, Sarah Barnhard, resident Melissa Ha, and lab staff Thomas Maxwell and Daniel Friese received a "Good Catch Award" for their interventions that prevented error and ensured patient safety in a recent case.
  • In the 2022 Blue Ridge Institute rankings for NIH funding, the department continues to be ranked at #37 of 143 pathology departments nationally. Total department NIH funding increased to $6.4 million in 2022.
  • Trainees in Associate Professor Brittany Dugger's lab are first authors on three recent publications. Post-doctoral fellow Rebekah Scalco and student Yamah Hamsafar published an articles on status of digital pathology as a resource in Alzheimer’s Center. UC Davis undergraduate Emily Huie evaluated the presence of TDP-43 pathology across ethnoracial groups utilizing the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center. Graduate student Lua Cerny Oliveiri published an article on pre-analytic variables and their effect in digital pathology in evaluation of Alzheimer’s disease.
  • A national search has begun to identify the ninth chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine following the retirement of current chair Lydia Howell, M.D., at the end of academic year 2022-23. WittKiefer is leading the search; interested individuals should submit inquiries through the office of Imran Ali via e-mail.
  • Kareem Allam, M.D. will be joining the department as a clinical informatics fellow in July. Allam is completing his residency in clinical pathology at the University of Texas in Houston, received his medical degree from University of Illinois, Chicago, master’s degree in physics from UC Los Angeles, and undergraduate degree from UC Irvine.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan has two new grants: $1 million grant from California Department of Public Health for "Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Metabolic Dysfunction and Alzheimer's Disease: The Diet-Gut-Liver-Brain Axis" and $670,000 from Fox Chase for "Preclinical Drug Development Program: Preclinical Efficacy and Intermediate Endpoint Biomarkers."
  • Associate Professor Tony Karnezis gave four one-hour talks, two lectures and two slide sessions on gynecological pathology including molecular and immunohistochemical profiling at the Philippine Society of Pathologists annual meeting on January 14, 2023.
  • Professor Alexander “Sandy” Borowsky’s $1.1 million contract from the Eunice Shriver Foundation National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was featured in the first annual public Research Impact Report from School of Medicine's Office of Research (constantcontact.com). This contract supports the Clinical Center for the California Partnership for Personalized Nutrition (CAPPN).
  • A unique study, Prediction-of-tuberculosis-using-an-automated-machine-learning-platform-for-models-trained-on-synthetic-data (amazon.science), involving the UC Davis-developed MILO platform, was published in the Journal of Pathology Informatics and appears on the Amazon Science site where AWS highlights its notable studies. Authors include Pathology faculty Nam Tran, Imran Khan, Jeffery Wajda, resident Luke Dang, and former faculty members Hooman Rashidi and Samer Albahra, plus collaborators at Amazon Web Services.
  • Professor Nam Tran, Senior Director of Clinical Pathology has several new leadership roles. He is the new Chair-Elect for the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Point-of-Care Testing Division, Chair of the AACC's Northern California Section, and a member of the International Federation for Clinical Chemistry's work group for continuous glucose meters.

2022

  • Associate Professor James Chan published “Simulated fine-needle aspiration diagnosis of follicular thyroid nodules by hyperspectral Raman microscopy and chemometric analysis - PMC (nih.gov)” in the September issue of the Journal of Biomedical Optics with former cytology director and Professor emeritus Alaa Afify and collaborators from the UC Davis Health Department of Surgery and from the University of Washington.
  • Anatomic Pathology Director Dorina Gui is among the members of the Association of Directors of Anatomic and Surgical Pathology advocating for maintaining regulatory exemptions for digital pathology implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic in a recent letter published in Nature Medicine: “Ensuring remote diagnostics for pathologists: an open letter to the US Congress.”
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson presented “New Technologies for Tissue Microscopy, New opportunities for Computational Pathology” at the Digital Pathology Association’s annual meeting on October 16-19, 2022 in Las Vegas.
  • Resident Jiejun Jeff Wu presented a poster “Which Features, If Any, Are Diagnostically Specific For Allergic Contact Dermatitis?” at the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting, October 8-11, 2022 in New Orleans.
  • Residents Anupam Mitra and Jiejun Jeff Wu presented posters at the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s 100th annual meeting on September 7-9, 2022 in Chicago. Mitra presented “Squamous Morules in a Fundic Gland Polyp: A Rare Benign Mimic of Well-Differentiated Neuroendocrine Tumor” and Wu presented “Biannual Administration of a Slide Exam to Resident to Prepare Them for Board Examinations: A Pilot Effort”.
  • A study published in BMJ Open by Distinguished Professor Ralph Green with collaborators in the United Kingdom demonstrated that high levels of folate is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and death.
  • Brittany Dugger is the UC Davis pathology leader on a multi-campus award from the UC Partnerships in Computational Transformation with UC Irvine and UC San Francisco for the project “Data-and Label-Efficient Hybrid Deep-Learning Frameworks for Neuropathology and Neuroradiology Image Analysis.” This partnership will build the deep learning framework that will benefit digital pathology analysis at multiple campuses.
  • Imran Khan has published a novel “Gambit on the Devil’s Chessboard”, a geopolitical thriller which was inspired by his research on tuberculosis in third world countries and the growing threat of poverty to world security. The trailer is available online and the book can be found on Amazon.
  • Residents Anupam Mitra and Jeff Wu presented posters at the ASCP’s annual meeting in Chicago, September 7-10, 2022, celebrating the organization’s 100th anniversary. Karen Matsukuma and Kurt Schaberg were faculty mentors for these poster presentations.
  • Karen Matsukuma is the new Associate Residency Program Director for Research. She oversees the department’s mentored research grant program and supports and advises residents re: research opportunities.
  • The National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center has named Associate Professor Brittany Dugger, Ph.D. to a three-year term as a member of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers’ Neuropathology Core Steering Committee, effective at the conclusion of their annual meeting in October 2022.
  • Professor and Senior Director of Clinical Pathology Nam Tran, Ph.D. has been invited to serve as a member of the new California Monkeypox Scientific Advisory Committee for the California Dept. of Public Health.
  • An editorial by Chair Lydia Howell in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology discusses actions to address the gender disparities recently identified among recipients of recognition awards in major pathology professional societies.
  • Professor Alexander “Sandy” Borowsky has been elected to the Faculty Executive Committee.
  • The Pathology Biorepository Shared Resource (BRSR) was highly rated as Outstanding to Exceptional in the recent site visit by the Cancer Center's External Advisory Board.
  • Associate Dean of Curriculum and Medical Student Education Kristin Olson is the new chair-elect of the Council of the Undergraduate Medical Educators Section of the Association of Pathology Chairs.
  • Chair Lydia Howell completed her two-year term as President of the Association of Pathology Chairs at the annual meeting in Chicago on July 19-22. She now serves as Past-President.
  • MUSE microscopy developed by pathology faculty members Richard Levenson and Farzad Fereidouni uniquely demonstrates micro-anatomy of peripheral nerves as shared in this recent publication in Nature Scientific Reports.
  • Professor Konstantinos Zarbalis and Distinguished Professor Ralph Green received a $2.3 million NIH R01 grant “Folic Acid, B12, and Neurodevelopmental Risk”
  • Vice Chair of Research Yu-jui Yvonne Wan received a $1 million grant from the California Department of Public Health’s Alzheimer’s Disease Program for “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Metabolic Dysfunction and Alzheimer's Disease: The Diet-Gut-Liver-Brain Axis”.
  • Two undergraduate research assistants under the mentorship of Associate Professor Brittany Dugger received Women and Diversity Awards at the 98th annual meeting of the American Association of Neuropathologist’s on June 9-12, 2022.  Emily Huie for her abstract “Evaluating TDP-43 Deposition in Alzheimer’s Disease in Persons Other Than Non-Hispanic Whites” and Kiana Nava for “Deep Learning for Automated Blood Vessel Detection on Digitized H&E Stained Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded Sections.”
  • Zhengfeng Lai, a graduate student researcher in the Chuah/Dugger Laboratories received a R13 Travel Award to present his abstract “Generalizability of deep learning frameworks for amyloid-beta deposit assessment, evaluation of pre-analytic variables” at the 98th annual meeting of the American Association of Neuropathologist’s on June 9-12, 2022.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan has been honored by the University of California, Davis with the title Distinguished Professor for having achieved the highest level of scholarship, national and international reputation as a researcher, excellence in teaching, and highly meritorious service.
  • Graduating medical student Tess Engel received the Robert Stowell Award for Outstanding Student in Pathology at the 51st commencement of the UC Davis School of Medicine on May 13, 2022.
  • Gastrointestinal pathologist Kurt Schaberg was quoted in The Atlantic about adenovirus hepatitis as a possible cause of the liver failure of unknown origin that is growing in frequency among children.
  • Faculty members Denis Dwyre, Leonor Fernando, and "Krish" Krishnan, in collaboration with Jason Tau from the Dept. of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior published “Evaluation of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura and other thrombotic microangiopathies: lessons learned from a 14 year retrospective study.”
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger and former Edmondson Summer Research Intern Sakshi Das were among a multi-disciplinary team whose recent publication in Acta Neuropathologica Communications addressed the difficult question of inter-observer variation when creating machine learning algorithms for neuropathology.
  • Senior Director of Clinical Pathology Nam Tran was honored as Grand Marshall of UC Davis’ 103rd annual Picnic Day parade in recognition of his contributions to address the COVID-19 pandemic through local testing and via service on the Governor’s COVID-19 Testing Task Force.
  • On May 7th, Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni presented a poster at UC Global Health Day at UC Santa Cruz on "Slide-free Hands-free Tissue Imaging for Global Health Appropriate Cancer Diagnostics”.
  • In March, the 111th annual US and Canadian Academy of Pathology featured four posters by members of our department. Li Lei, “Granulomas Associated with Renal Neoplasms: A Multi-Institutional Clinicopathologic Study of 92 Cases”; Tony Karnezis, “Exploring the Genomic Landscape of Vulvovaginal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Large Dataset”; Karen Matsukuma and Dorina Gui, “Hepatoid Neuroendocrine Tumors: An Important Diagnostic Pitfall”; Karen Matsukuma and Raymond Gong, Immunohistochemical Characterization of Small and Large Duct Cholangiocarcinomas in a Western Cohort.”
  • Volunteer clinical faculty member, Laurel Waters received the American Medical Womens Association’s Bertha Van Hoosen Award for her exceptional leadership and service to women physicians and medical students at their 107th annual meeting in March.
  • A review article by junior specialist My-Le Nguyen and corresponding author Brittany Dugger draws attention to the dearth of studies on persons outside of select groups and advises caution when using historic terms for race and ethnicity when conducting research given the diversity of populations within these groups.
  • Professor Alexander “Sandy” Borowsky is the principle investigator for the newly awarded All of Us Nutrition study, a $12.9 M multi-institutional award from NIH which that leverages UC Davis’ unique strengths in nutrition and health, and includes experts at other universities.
  • Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni received a R01 grant as PI for his multi-site study “Rapid Quantitative Renal Fibrosis Evaluation with Dual Mode Microscopy” to refine and validate a new type of microscope, DUET, developed at UC Davis.
  • An article in the January 2022 issue of the Journal of Pathology Informatics by our department’s artificial intelligence team in collaboration with Amazon Web Services evaluated the use of synthetic data for machine learning to predict diagnosis of tuberculosis and published in and represents a valuable partnership between the department's artificial intelligence team and Amazon Web Services.
  • Medical student Mustafa Shakir and mentor Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger published a review article in the January 2022 issue of the Journal of Experimental Neuropathology and Neurology on the evolution of approaches to identify brain pathologies in Alzheimer’s disease, including recent machine learning approaches.
  • On World Education Day, January 24, 2022, Chair Lydia Howell was recognized as a World Expert in Educational Personnel by Expertscape who ranks her among the top 0.1% of scholars writing about Educational Personnel over the past 10 years.
  • Professor Nam Tran has been quoted in several news articles re: COVID-19 testing during the Omicron surge, including BuzzFeed and an APNews story that was picked up by 200+ news outlets.
  • Resident Alex Ladenheim received a Pathology Trainee Project Grant in Health Services Research for $5000 for his project “Outcomes: eGFR and Race” from the Association of Pathology Chairs’ Society of ’67.
  • Professor Nam Tran is featured as an alumni success story for UC Davis Health's Mentored Clinical Research Training Program.

2021

  • The department’s industry partnership with SpectraPass to develop a novel, rapid and highly sensitive non-PCR COVID-19 test was featured in an article from UC Davis Health.
  • Assistant Professor Kurt Schaberg officially assumed the directorship of the residency program on December 1, 2021. Schaberg replaces former Director Hooman Rashidi who will become the Director of the Cleveland Clinic's new Center for Artificial Intelligence in January 2022.
  • The newest edition of the textbook Williams' Hematology: The Red Cell and Its Diseases published in November 2021 features two chapters authored by our faculty. Ralph Green authored Chapter 8: Folate, Cobalamin, and Megaloblastic Anemia". Ananya Datta Mitra and Ralph Green co-authored Chapter 12 "Nutritional Causes of other Anemias."
  • On 10/22/2921, KXTV aired a news segment highlighting the WISDOM study for breast cancer screening and featured Professor Alexander “Sandy” Borowsky, the UC Davis Health site PI.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan’s article “Probiotics Improve Gastrointestinal Function and Life Quality in Pregnancy” was published in a special issue of Nutrients: Gut Microbiota in Human Health and Diseases.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson is one of the Guest Editors for the American Journal of Pathology’s October theme issue on artificial intelligence and machine learning, and includes a co-authored editorial by Levenson.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green has been recognized as a World Expert in Deficiency Diseases during years 2011-2021 by Expertscape.
  • Assistant Professor Kurt Schaberg was named to the Top Six in the ASCP's 40 Under 40 program.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger has been appointed as a member of the College of American Pathologists' Neuropathology Committee.
  • Chair Lydia Howell shared the future of medical diagnostics as a panelist at the Western Association of Collegiate Schools of Business’ annual conference on at the Kimpton Hotel in Sacramento on October 11, 2021.
  • Associate Professor Kuang-yu Jen has been elected Treasurer of the Renal Pathology Society.
  • The Pathologists' Power List 2021 includes three department faculty: The “In the Wings” category includes Assistant Professors John Paul Graff and Kurt Schaberg; Professor Nam Tran appears in the "Front(line) and Center" category.
  • Residency alumnus Guillermo Martinez-Torres has been appointed the Chief Medical Officer for Pathology Services for HCA Healthcare, overseeing services for 185 hospitals and 2,000+ sites of care in 20 states and the United Kingdom.
  • Transfusion Director Sarah Barnhard was the UC Davis Health site investigator for the multi-center study evaluating the efficacy of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
  • Transfusion Director Sarah Barnhard and colleagues at the other University of California medical centers highlight the critical blood shortage in a commentary in Transfusion, the official journal of the American Association of Blood Banks.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green was inducted into the American Society for Nutrition's (ASN) Class of 2021 Fellows at their virtual annual meeting, June 7-10, 2021. Election as a fellow recognizes individuals for significant discoveries and distinguished careers in the field of nutrition and is the highest honor awarded by the ASN.
  • At the American Diabetes Association's virtual 81st Annual Meeting on June 25, 2021, Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan shared her work “The Bile Acid Receptor and FXR” demonstrating that probiotics are useful to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
  • A new study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology led by Chair of Dermatology Sam Hwang with pathology collaborator Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan shared that switching to a more balanced diet may reduce inflammatory skin disease, like psoriasis, and joint pain.
  • Assistant Professor Kurt Schaberg is recognized as one of the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s 40 Under 40, a program that recognizes members under the age of 40 for their achievements and leadership qualities that are making an impact on pathology and laboratory medicine.
  • Transfusion Director Sarah Barnhard shared the importance of donating blood during the current critical blood shortage on CBS Sacramento on June 23, 2021.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger's medical student mentee, Mustafa Shakir, received a travel award to present a poster on their work “Advances in Deep Neuropathological Phenotyping of Alzheimer’s Disease: Past, Present, and Future” at the 97th Annual American Association of Neuropathology's hybrid meeting in St. Louis, June 10-13, 2021.
  • Associate Professors Karen Matsukuma and Tony Karnezis received a New Research Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the Academic Senate Research Grant for their project “Investigating the effect of the TP53 P72R SNP on pancreatic cancer cell biology, histopathology, and clinical outcome.”
  • Associate Professor Kostas Zarbalis received an Academic Senate Interdisciplinary Research Grant for his project “Prenatal folic acid and neurodevelopmental risk via epigenetic regulation.” Distinguished Professor Ralph Green is co-PI on this proposal and Janine LaSalle from the Dept. of Medical Microbiology and Immunology is a co-Investigator.
  • As President of the Association of Pathology Chairs, Chair Lydia Howell encouraged Congress to support Senator Rand Paul’s re-introduction of the VITAL Act.
  • The new Center for Diagnostic Innovation was formally launched. This center is co-led by the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Radiology.
  • The industry-academic partnership led by Professor Nam Tran to develop a new non-PCR test for COVID-19 was featured on CBS Sacramento.
  • Associate Professor Kuang-yu Jen’s publication “Clinicopathologic characteristics of JC virus nephropathy in kidney transplant recipients” was featured as cover art in the May 2021 issue of the journal Transplantation.
  • Assistant Professor John Paul Graff and neurosurgery colleagues published an unusual case of intracranial myeloid sarcoma in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger’s work applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to study the of brains of people with Alzheimer's disease is highlighted in a story on the UC Davis website.
  • On May 10, Assistant Professor Brittany spoke as a panelist in the Digital Webinar Series sponsored by The Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers Digital Pathology Working group and the National Alzheimers Coordinating Center.
  • The clinical laboratory eliminated race-based reference ranges for eGFR on May 4, making UC Davis Health among the first institutions to adopt a change that promotes health equity, in concordance with recommendations from the National Kidney Foundation. UC Davis drops race-based reference ranges from a standard kidney test.
  • Professor Nam Tran is quoted on the future of AI/ML in lab medicine is quoted in an article in the April 1, 2021 issue of Clinical Laboratory News published by the American Association of Clinical Chemistry.
  • An article highlighting the career paths of women chairs of academic departments of pathology was co-authored by Chair Lydia Howell and appears in the Journal of the Association of Pathology Chairs.
  • Nature Scientific Reports features an article on a novel non-PCR COVID-19 test paired with machine learning by lead authors Professors Nam Tran and Hooman Rashidi “Novel Application of Machine Learning with MALDI-TOF-MS for rapid high-throughput screening of COVID-19: A proof of concept.” A video highlights the university-industry partnership.
  • The department’s work developing COVID-19 testing during the pandemic was highlighted in a recent news story.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green has been elected to be a member of the American Society for Nutrition Class of 2021 Fellows, the highest honor within this society.
  • Professor Nam Tran is quoted on the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning in laboratory medicine in the April 1 edition of Clinical Laboratory News, a publication from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry.
  • The April 2021 issue of Pathology Research in Cancer features an article by hematopathology fellow Alae Yaseen on “Whole exome sequencing of a gut-associate lymphoid tissue neoplasm points to precursor or early form of sporadic colon cancer”. Other authors include faculty mentors Karen Matsukuma and Kristin Olson, resident Alex Ladenheim and members of Cancer Center.
  • Resident Ying Liu is first author on a newly published paper in Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine with pathology faculty mentors on “Analyzing Anatomic Pathology On Call Summaries to Improve Resident Education”.
  • The new 10th edition of Williams' Hematology includes two chapters by Distinguished Professor Ralph Green and hematopathology fellow Ananya Datta Mitra.
  • Assistant Professor Farzad Fereidouni and Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson describe the future of microscopy and how they are shaping the future in their editorial in BioTechniques.
  • The new textbook “Practical Gastrointestinal Pathology: Frequently Asked Questions” includes two chapters co-authored by three faculty members, Dorina Gui, Kristin Olson, and Karen Matsukuma.
  • A UC Davis collaboration that included gyn pathologist Tony Karnezis describes an interesting and previously unknown mechanism that identifies a better prognosis for ovarian cancer patients.
  • The 110th Annual United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology on March 13-18, 2021 featured a poster by former cytopathology fellow Sara Kwong and faculty mentors Alaa Afify, Kurt Schaberg and JP Graff on “Machine Learning Approach to Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology”.
  • Associate Professor Tony Karnezis was a co-author on a platform presentation “Mesonephric-Like Carcinoma of the Ovary is a Rare and Aggressive Histotype of Ovarian Carcinoma” 110th Annual United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology on March 13-18, 2021.
  • Professor Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno's CENE brain bank was featured in the March 12th issue of the Mexican newspaper “La crónica de hoy”.
  • Professor Izumi Maezawa has a newly funded NIH R01 from the National Institute of Aging for ~$1.9M entitled “Soluble epoxide hydrolase-regulated lipid signaling in Alzheimer’s disease”. This study will explore the impact of preserving epoxy fatty acids by inhibition of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) on Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
  • Professors Nam Tran and Hooman Rashidi have a new publication on the use of machine-learning and point-of-care testing in burns and ICU patients to predict acute kidney injury.
  • Forensic pathology faculty member Jason Tovar is featured in a Crime Scenes Netflix segment called “Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” on one of the most famous unsolved deaths in Los Angeles -- tune in!
  • Professor Nam Tran is a co-author with colleagues from UCSF/CZBioHub on a publication in the journal Nature “Nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in young children do not differ significantly from older children and adults”.
  • Multi-institutional study led by UC Davis faculty Elham Vali Betts and Hooman Rashidi demonstrates how convolutional neural networks can be used to create histology teaching tools using a digital pathology app. We are proud of the innovative approaches to education and diagnostics happening in our department!
  • Post-doctoral fellow Taylor Howard presented her work with pathology mentors Nam Tran and Hooman Rashidi “Novel Application of Automated Machine Learning With MALDI-TOF-MS for Rapid High-Throughput Identifcation of COVID-19: A Proof of Concept” at the National Science Foundation’s Student Conference on COVID-19 Modelling on January 28-29, 2021.
  • UC Davis’ innovative asymptomatic testing program for campus and the Davis community was featured in the NY Times. The medical director for this program is chair emeritus Ralph Green.
  • Professor Nam Tran and UC Davis Health are featured in this article reflecting over one year of COVID-19.

2020

2019

  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger received a $1.7M grant from the California Dept. of Public Health for her project using machine-learning approaches to detect Alzheimer's disease. Pathology faculty Lee-Way Jin and John Paul Graff are members of the research team.
  • Residency and fellowship alumnus Jose Galvez, M.D., has been appointed as the US Food and Drug Administration’s Deputy Director, Office of Strategic Programs. Galvez was Chief of the Office of Biomedical Translational Research Informatics Systems at the NIH Clinical Center.
  • At the American Society of Cytopathology 67th annual meeting, Associate Professor James Chan’s work with former faculty member Eric Huang on diagnostic use of Raman spectroscopy in thyroid lesions received the New Frontiers Award. Fellow Alejandro Mendoza was a finalist for the Quality Improvement Award.
  • Professor Alexander "Sandy" Borowsky is part of the new Cooperative Research Center for NanoScaffold-Based Chlamydia trachomatis Vaccines, and serves as the immunopathologist in the development and testing of a novel vaccine against Chlamydia infection. Funded by a five-year, $10.1M NIH grant, this work is led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and includes investigators from UC Davis and UC Irvine.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger co-authored the new book “Fundamental Statistical Methods in the Analysis of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases” published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Vice Chair of Informatics and GME Hooman Rashidi delivered three lectures on artificial intelligence/imachine learning in pathology as a visiting professor at Romania’s Vasile Goldiș Western University of Arad.
  • Associate Professor Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno was honored with an ADVANCE Scholar Award on October 24, 2019 in recognition of her research leadership, outreach and mentorship of those under-represented in STEM.
  • Resident Ying Liu’s abstract “Genomic Signatures and Clinicopathological Correlation in Uterine Smooth Muscle Tumors of Uncertain Malignant Potential, Leiomyosarcoma, and Leiomyoma with Bizarre Nuclei” has been accepted for competition in the prestigious Stowell-Orbison Surgical Pathology/Autopsy Award at the US & Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in March 2020.
  • Medical student Vivian Tang received a travel scholarship to attend the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting in Orlando, FL, September 21-25, 2019, and presented her poster “Neuropathologic Applications of Microscopy with Ultraviolet Surface Excitation (MUSE): A Concordance Study of Primary and Metastatic Tumors”. Mirna Lechpammer and Richard Levenson served as faculty mentors for this project.
  • A new breath test to detect opioids supported by the department’s Collaborative for Diagnostic Innovation was reported in the Journal of Breath Research, by Professors Cristina Davis (Biomedical Engineering) and Michael Schivo (Pulmonary and Critical Care, Department of Internal Medicine).
  • Two UC Davis Health clinical lab scientist students, Nicole Velez and Cary Westergard, received scholarships at the California Association of Medical Laboratory Technologists annual meeting in Sacramento, September 20-22.
  • Assistant Professor Kristin Grimsrud received a K01 Award for her project "Characterizing the Impact of Genetic Polymorphism on Fentanyl Efficacy and Tolerance in Pediatrics."
  • UC Davis Health's blog "Good Food is Good Medicine" features research by Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan on the effects of tea on health.
  • UC Davis Health’s clinical laboratory’s leading-edge work in antimicrobial stewardship was featured in the August issue of CAP Today.
  • Director of Clinical Chemistry Nam Tran visited Thailand's Naresuan University and spoke on “The Future of Point-of-Care Testing and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence” on September 9, 2019. His host was former UC Davis Ph.D. student and post-doctoral fellow, Asst. Professor Wanvisa Treebuphachatsakul.
  • Hematopathology fellowship alumnus Ted Strom, M.D., Ph.D. died in the tragic dive boat fire off the coast of California on September 6. Strom was an associate professor at the Univ. of Tennessee Heath Science Center and practiced at the VA Medical Center in Memphis.
  • Associate Professor Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno was recognized by the UC Davis MIND Institute for her collaboration at the “Aprendiendo Juntos” Conference on August 31, 2019.
  • Ralph Green was a panelist at the National Institutes of Health Workshop NIH Workshop on “Metabolic Interaction Between Excess Folates/Folic acid and Vitamin B12 Deficiency” in Bethesda, MD on July 31 - August 1, 2019.
  • Professors Richard Levenson and Bennet Omalu were recognized on The Pathologist's Power List 2019 as trailblazers of the lab.
  • Professor Hooman Rashidi and Associate Professor Nam Tran gave a platform presentation on “Burn Sepsis and Acute Kidney Injury: Unique Population and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence” at the Next Generation Dx Summit, August 20-22, 2019 in Washington DC.
  • A poster by Clinical Chemistry Director Nam Tran and colleagues on “Comparison of Traumatic Injury Biomarker Profiles Between Burned and Non-Burned Trauma Patients: Are Burn Patients Different?” was presented at the Military Health System Research Symposium
  • Researcher Ying Hu, Ph.D. received a NIH R50 Research Specialist Award which provides 5 years of full salary support to develop stable research career opportunities for exceptional scientists pursuing research within an existing NCI-funded translational cancer research program. Hu works in the laboratory of Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan, Ph.D..
  • Chair Lydia Howell was quoted in a New York Times article on family-friendly careers in medicine.
  • Assistant professor Brittany Dugger received a $3.8 million grant from the National Institute of Aging to define the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease in Hispanic cohorts.
  • Clinical Chemistry Director Nam Tran spoke as part of a multi-disciplinary panel presentation on high-sensitivity troponin with Robert Christiansen (UMaryland), Lori Daniels (UCSD), and Bryn Mumma (UC Davis) at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry’s 71st annual meeting in Anaheim, August 4-8, 2019.
  • Associate Professor James Chan’s recent publication on the use of Raman spectroscopy for diagnosis of thyroid nodules was featured on the Optical Society’s website.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan has been appointed a Councilor for the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America.
  • Graduating cytotechnology student Jaycie Dunshie is a 2019 recipient of the Geraldine Colby Zeiler Award for Students of Cytotechnology given annually by the College of American Pathologists Foundation Board of Directors and the American Society of Cytopathology.
  • Assistant professors Brittany Dugger and John Paul Graff presented a discussion group on “Implementing Artificial Intelligence in Academic Pathology Departments” on July 24, 2019 at the Association of Pathology Chairs annual meeting in Boston.
  • Associate Dean of Curriculum Kristin Olson gave two presentation at the Association of Pathology Chair’s annual meeting in Boston. On July 23, 2019 she spoke on “Providing Faculty/Career Development”. On July 24, 2019, she shared “Pathologist Experience in Educational Leadership.”
  • Assistant professor Elham Vali Betts and Associate Dean of Curriculum Kristin Olson and presented a poster on Utility of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning in the Histology Education Arena” on July 22, 2019 at the Association of Pathology Chairs’ annual meeting in Boston. Vali Betts also presented poster “Utility of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning in Identifying Acute Leukemia, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia in Peripheral Blood”
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson shared his experience and thoughts on the future of pathology in an interview with The Pathologist.
  • Faculty members Hooman Rashidi and Nam Tran developed an artificial intelligence tool that uses laboratory data to predict the development of acute kidney injury in burn unit patients.
  • On July 1, eight outstanding new housestaff joined the department, including new residents Luke Dang (Univ. of Washington), Jacob Donnelly (Marian Univ.), Alexander Ladenheim (NY Medical College). New fellows include Jinhua Piao in Cytopath, Ananya Datta Mitra in Hemepath, Samer Albahra (Informatics), Alejandro Mendoza and Trevor Starnes in Surg Path.
  • Professor Jeff Gregg spoke on "The Clinical Utility of Comprehensive Genomic Profiling in Breast Cancer” at the 4th China-US Summit Forum on Breast Cancer in Guangzhou, China on June 21-22, 2019. Over 700 breast cancer specialists attended the two-day conference aimed at forming a global unified front to combat breast cancer.
  • Resident Ying Liu received the Certificate of Congressional Recognition on June 22, 2019 from Congresswoman Judy Chu, Ph.D. for her volunteer work with the American Cancer Society to raise awareness of cancer prevention and health among Chinese-Americans.
  • On June 17, 12 talented undergraduates joined the department as 2019 Edmondson Summer Research Interns: Holly Adams (Occidental), Isabel Ball (Bowdoin), Taylor Borgelt (Howard), Amanda Brewster (Santa Rosa Jr. Coll), Markaila Farnham (Emory), Casey Gilles (UCLA), Michael Hsieh (UC Davis), Alexander Lopez (UC Davis), Juan Novoa (UC Davis), Giselle Roches (St. Mary's of CA), Levon Witherspoon (San Mateo Comm College), Felicia Yen (UC Davis).
  • Assistant professors Brittany Dugger and John Paul Graff spoke as panelists at the University of California’s Artificial Intelligence in Biomedicine Conference at UCLA on June 17-18, 2019.
  • Associate professor Kostas Zarbalis presented "Wdfy3 in neural stem cell proliferation and long-range connectivity" at the 5th Annual Shriner's-Temple Symposium on Neural Repair in Philadelphia on June 14, 2019.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan receive the Best Tea Health Advocate for her research on the effects of tea on the GI microbiome and its influence in liver carcinogenesis at The World Tea Expo, in Las Vegas, June 11, 2019. Wan was nominated by the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative.
  • On June 6-9, 2019, the American Association of Neuropathologists’ annual meeting featured presentations from UC Davis pathology faculty. Associate professor Mirna Lechpammer presented a poster on “Metabolic profile alterations in the rodent brain following brief exposure to DMSO in infancy”. Assistant professor Brittany Dugger gave a platform presentation on "Amyloid beta deposit identification by multiple expert trained machine learning models."
  • Vice Chair of Research, Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan, Ph.D., has been nominated for the Best Tea Health Advocate for her research on the impact of tea on the microbiome and its effect in health and disease. This award will be given the 2019 World Tea Expo in Las Vegas in June.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson will serve as one of the faculty lecturers at the Jena-Davis (JEDIS) Alliance of Excellence in Biophotonics’ inter-disciplinary summer school for graduate students and early stage career post-doctoral fellows on August 25-30, 2019.
  • Professor Bennet Omalu will serve as the speaker for the UC Davis Graduate Studies commencement on June 13, 2019.
  • Director of Clinical Chemistry, Nam Tran, gave platform and poster presentations on biotin, and ran a discussion panel won best practices in handling immunoassay interferences at EuroMedLab 2019 in Barcelona, May 19-23, 2019.
  • American Society for Apheresis's 40th annual meeting in Portland, OR on May 14-18 featured posters by our apheresis team, including faculty Grace Monis, Leonor Fernando, and Sarah Barnhard, Chief Resident Andy Jones, and Edmondson Summer Research Intern Esteban Rios.
  • Graduating medical student Karly Williams Silva was the recipient of the 2019 Robert Stowell, M.D., Ph.D. Award for Excellence in Pathology at the Student Awards Dinner on May 14, 2019.
  • Assistant Professor, Brittany Dugger’s novel artificial intelligence tool to aid in diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease is featured in a new UC Davsi Health video.
  • Distinguished Professor, Ralph Green, an expert on B-vitamins and their effect in health and disease, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s recent article on B12 deficiency.
  • Professor and Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson has been appointed to the editorial board of the American Journal of Pathology.
  • In honor of National Laboratory Professionals Week, KCRA Channel 3 shared efforts to support wellness for our laboratory staff in a news story on April 25, 2019.
  • Hooman Rashidi, M.D., Professor and Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education, has been appointed to the national editorial board of the Journal of Pathology Informatics.
  • Educational outreach programs on neuroscience and brain health developed by Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger and Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño for local K-12 students were featured in a recent press release.
  • The American Burn Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, April 2-5, 2019, featured several presentations from the department, including a platform presentation by Assistant Professor Kristin Grimsrud “Characterizing Fentanyl Variability Using Population Pharmacokinetics in Pediatric Burn Patients.” Ph.D. candidate Kelly Lima, a mentee of Associate Professor Nam Tran, presented a poster “A Survey of Bacterial Microbiome Dysbiosis in Burn ICU Patients.”
  • Associate Professor Konstantinos Zarbalis presented "Pak1ip1 gene mutation results in neural crest-dependent developmental defects" at the West Coast Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology Meeting, March 21-24, 2019 in Cambria, CA.
  • For the next six years, Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño will serve as a research advisor for the University of Puerto Rico Medical School. She is the first woman chosen as an advisor in the 17 years of the program.
  • Preclinical findings from the laboratory of Associate Professor Izumi Maezawa published in Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, showed that senicapoc, a KCa3.1 inhibitor developed to treat sickle cells disease, reduced neuroinflammation and mitigated Alzheimer’s disease-like deficits in mice.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan received a $2.7M award to study “Dietary-modulated Bile Acid Signaling in Regulating Cognitive Health and Dysfunction” from the California Department of Public Health’s Alzheimer’s Disease Program Director of Neuropathology Lee-Way Jin is a co-PI on this project.
  • Resident Ying Liu and faculty mentor Assistant Professor Karen Matsukuma presented a poster “Analyzing Anatomic Pathology On-Call Summaries to Improve Pathology Resident On-Call Experience and Patient Care” at the 2019 annual meeting of the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 15-21, in Baltimore.
  • Director of Neuropathology Lee-Way Jin is principle investigator on a new $2.1M NIH grant for "The potassium channel Kv1.3 in perinatal brain injury" which includes Associate Professor of Pathology Izumi Maezawa.
  • Match Day brought the department 4 new incoming residents: Luke Dang (Univ. of Washington), Jacob Donnelly (Marian Univ.), Alexander Ladenheim (NY Medical College), Anupam Mitra (R.G. Kar Medical School).
  • UC Davis Health’s annual Quality Forum on March 13 featured 9 posters and a platform presentation from the department. Projects represented work from all parts of the laboratory, including integration of HIV and hepatitis C testing into the Emergency Department, clinical utility of high-sensitivity troponin, detection of pneumonia-causing origin in urine, transitioning from APTT to anti-Xa testing in the laboratory, rapid detection of pregnancy in the Emergency Dept, blood management strategies, and more.
  • Three department faculty will be sharing their work at the TriCon Conference on March 10-15, 2019 in San Francisco: Professors Richard Levenson and Hooman Rashidi will speak on the digital pathology program, and Professor emeritus Gerald Kost will speak in the point-of-care technologies program.
  • KCRA Channel 3 featured Assistant Professor Brittany Duggerand her new project to create a digitized brain bank to unlock the mysteries of Alzheimer's Disease.
  • Associate Professor Nam Tran was featured in a podcast on "Role of Diagnostics In Supporting Antibiotic Stewardship Goals" as part of an educational program “C. diff. Spores and More” on healthcare-associated infections sponsored by Clorox.
  • Professor Jeff Gregg, Senior Director of Clinical Pathology, received a $201,205 award from AstraZeneca for his study “Tumor mutational burden correlation to PD-L1 immunohistochemistry, and clinical outcome with immune-oncology therapy.”
  • Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education Hooman Rashidi presented his artificial intelligence work “Sometimes Less Yields More: Will Artificial Intelligence be Ready for Prime Time?” at the Southeastern Administrators and Pathology Chairs Regional Conference in Amelia Island, February 1-3, 2019.
  • Assistant Professor, John Paul Graff, led an Innovation Hackathon sponsored by Vision Service Plan at the UC Davis Machine Learning Workgroup’s networking event on January 30, 2019.
  • The UC Davis All of Us research program, led by site principle investigator Alexander (Sandy) Borowsky, had a successful site visit by NIH program officer Holly Garriock on January 28, 2019.
  • The annual meeting of the Group for Research in Pathology Education on January 24-26, 2019 in New Orleans featured a presentation by Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education Hooman Rashidi on “Integrating Technology Tools in Medical Education.” Associate Dean of Curriculum Kristin Olson served on the program committee.
  • Medical student Alanna Dubrovsky presented her project "The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Teaching Human Histology" at the Western Medical Research Conference on January 24, 2019 in Carmel, CA. Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education, Hooman Rashidi served as her mentor.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green’s “Primer on Vitamin B12 Deficiency” received a ‘Highly cited paper’ designation by Web of Science as one of the top 1% of papers of similar age in the field of clinical medicine.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan is a featured speaker at 4th Annual Tea Colloquium sponsored by the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative on January 24, 2019 and will share her work on the effects of tea on the microbiome and its influence on health.
  • Residency program coordinator Anna Schmidt has been chosen as one of two UC Davis coordinators to attend the American College of Graduate Medical Education’s annual meeting in Orlando, March 7-10, 2019.
  • The department's holiday star giving program raised $3350 for the California Fire Foundation, UC Davis Kiwanis House, UC Davis Veterinary Catastrophic Fund, and the Sacramento Food Bank. Department members purchased $10 stars to show gratitude to co-workers which raised funds for the donations.
  • Associate Professor Mirna Lechpammer and medical student mentee Vivian Tang received a $5,000.00 Pathology Trainee Project Grant in Healthcare Innovation from the Association of Pathology Chairs’ Society of ’67 for their project “Slide-free Histology via Microscopy using Ultraviolet Surface Excitation – Applications in Neuropathology.”

2018

  • Assistant Professors Brittany Dugger and John Paul Graff received a 2019 Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) award of $269,867 from the UC Office of the President for her project “An enhanced UC digital pathology infrastructure.” Their project was one of 16 highly meritorious projects chosen from a pool of 179 eligible applications, and one of only two chosen from UC Davis.
  • Clinical lab scientists Stacy Yee and Jennifer Keyser, along with Ky Van from our Clinical/Quality Research team and PhD student Kelly Lima volunteered at the UC Davis Health medical tent at the California International Marathon on December 2. They ran our point-of-care blood gas analyzer and to keep the runners safe and healthy.
  • On December 1, 2018, Assistant Professor Kristin Grimsrud was the keynote speaker for 2018 Western Regional Meeting of the American Physician Scientist Association held on the UC Davis campus.
  • Assistant Professor Elham Vali Betts and Associate Dean for Curriculum Kristin Olson presented a poster “Use of Short Essays to Support Core Competencies” at the UC Davis Third Annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference on November 30, 2018 at the UC Davis Conference Center.
  • Lili Sheng and Prasant Jena, post-doctoral fellows in the lab of Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan had their work chosen as “Best of The Liver Meeting” and will appear as part of a special slide set program highlighting key presentations from the American Association of the Study of Liver Disease’s annual meeting in San Francisco, November 9-13, 2018.
  • The Dermatopathology service have been officially approved as a training center for the International Committee of Dermatology-European Union of Medical Specialists. They can now accept international visiting scholars in dermatopathology who will be eligible to sit for the international dermatopathology board certification exam.
  • Professor Jeff Gregg, senior director of clinical pathology, participated as a panelist and lecturer at the Roche Global Expert Meeting in the Czech Republic in November. Gregg spoke on "Integrating Solid and Liquid Biopsy."
  • Bristol-Myers Squibb’s video “The Pathology Revolution”featured Professor Jeff Gregg who shared the important role of the pathologist in precision medicine.
  • Cytopathology Fellowship alumna, Nazila Hejazi, presented a poster “Incidence of HPV Negative High Grade Squamous Cell Intraepithelial Lesions in Cervix” at the American Society of Cytopathology’s 66th Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington DC on November 9-12, 2018. Hejazi is a pathologist at West Coast Pathology Laboratories in Hercules, CA, and a member of the faculty at California Northstate University College of Medicine in Elk Grove, CA.
  • Associate Professor Kuang-Yu Jen presented two posters “Clinicopathologic Characteristics of Kidney Allografts with Donor-Derived Diabetic Nephropathy” and “Deep Learning for Segmentation of Glomeruli, Interstitial Fibosis, and Tubular Atrophy in Renal Biopsies” at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting in San Diego, October 23-28, 2018. Jen was also a co-author on several posters with nephology fellows.
  • On October 26, 2018, UC Davis’ inaugural Symposium on Artificial Intelligence featured three podium presentations by pathology faculty members Levenson, Rashidi, and Graff, plus seven posters including other pathology faculty and housestaff. Assistant Professor John Paul Graff co-organize this symposium.
  • Chair Lydia Howell and the Chair of Pathology at Augusta University, Amyn Rojiani, led a workshop “Generational Differences and Diversity: Impact in Your Practice” to a sell-out crowd at the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting in Chicago on October 22, 2018.
  • Judith Kjelstrom, Ph.D., a 1973 graduate of the department’s clinical lab scientist training (CLS) program received the Meyers Distinguished Achievement Award, one of UC Davis’ highest honors. Kjelstrom is a member of the CLS training program’s Advisory Board.
  • Residency alumnus Guillermo Martinez-Torres was installed as the new President of the Foundation of the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting in Chicago, October 19-23, 2018.
  • Professor Alexander Borowsky and the Wisdom Breast Cancer Study team werefeatured on KCRA News on October 16, 2018 to encourage women to sign up and participate in improving breast cancer screening and risk stratification.
  • Assistant Professor David Unold taught two courses on transfusion medicine, apheresis, and coagulation topics using a “flipped classroom” approach at the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s annual meeting in Baltimore, October 3-8, 2018. Faculty from Yale, Virginia Commonwealth University and others joined him in teaching this course.
  • Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education Hooman Rashidi and his accomplishments as an award-winning teacher and app developer isfeatured in a new video from UC Davis Health.
  • The ophthalmic pathology service and the UC Davis Eye Center 's partnership with our department is the cover story in the latest issue of EnVision.
  • Several pathology faculty members, including professor emeriti Peter Barry, Murray Gardner, and Paul Luciw, are featured in the Center for Comparative Center’s website video which celebrates the Center’s 20th anniversary.
  • Professor Alexander Borowsky represented the MUSE microscopy team in the Astellas C3 Grand Prize competition on October 4, 2018 at the World Cancer Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Borowsky appears in thisvideo interview with the other C3 category winners.
  • Professor Lee-way Jin, Associate Professor Izumi Maezawa, together with Assistant Professor Angela Zivkovic (Department of Nutrition) and Professor Carlito Lebrilla (Department of Chemistry), have been awarded a new $3.4M R01 grant from the National institute of Aging entitled “Comprehensive characterization of glycosylation alterations in Alzheimer’s disease”. This project is designed to comprehensively map the sugar modifications of proteins in the brains and blood of Alzheimer’s disease patients, in order to understand how these changes affect Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The goal is to enable precision medicine solutions through the discovery of new biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
  • The department’s new Lab Director Iyda Antony, C.L.S., M.B.A. is one of the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s “40 Under Forty” honorees. This program honors ASCP members under the age of 40 for their achievements and leadership qualities that are making an impact on pathology and laboratory medicine.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technology Richard Levenson and the MUSE microscopy team won the technology category of the Astellas C3 Prize competition! MUSE is now in the running for the Grand Prize via a live pitch event at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) World Cancer Congress on October 3 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
  • Professor Regina Gandour-Edwards, Director of the Pathology Biorepository, is an investigator in a new $6.3M grant from the National Cancer Institute awarded to the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center to examining why some ethnic and racial minority groups fare worse than whites when they get cancer and to find more precise treatments to improve their chances of survival. Tumor samples from minority and non-minority patients will be used to grow tumors xenografts in mice.
  • Associate Professor Kristin Olson has been appointed Associate Dean of Curriculum. An innovative award-winning educator, Olson’s many honors include the 2018 UC Davis Outstanding Instructor Award in Basic Sciences, the 2015 Kaiser Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching in Clinical Studies, and is a two-time recipient of both the Ruebner-Rosenquist Excellence in Teaching Award from Internal Medicine, and the Pathology Residents’ Faculty Teaching Award.
  • On September 11-12, 2018, Irmi Feldman, Sr. Clinical Research Coordinator for our CAP-accredited Pathology Biorepository gave a presentation at OSCON 2018 (OpenSpecimen Data Management System - Community Meeting) in in Pittsburgh, PA on the OpenSpecimen workflow that she implemented for the JAX PDX (Patient Derived Xenograft) Models.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger and her colleague Ziqi Tang received 2nd place for their poster on artificial intelligence approaches to find amyloid plaques at the recent Northern California Alzheimer's Researchers' Symposium held at UC Berkeley.
  • Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño received a new $2.34M award from the NIH for her project "Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) pathology and anatomy: imaging and clinical correlates."
  • Department chair Lydia Pleotis Howell is featured in a new video series for UC Davis Health. She shares her story and the importance of supporting women’s careers in medicine and science.
  • Chief Administrative Office Catherine Diaz-Khansefid concluded a successful year as President of the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Research Administrators International at the chapter’s annual meeting on August 17, 2018 at UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.
  • Resident Guofeng "George" Gao is quoted in an announcement of Foundation Travel Grants from the American Society of Clinical Pathology. Gao’s travel grant will support his attendance at the ASCP meeting in Baltimore in October.
  • Associate Professor James Chan has received two grants from the National Science Foundation. He was awarded $439,500 for his project “A Multifocal Approach for Improving the Speed of 1064 nm Raman Microscopy” and $200,000 for “Throughput Characterization of a Prototype Second Harmonic Generation Flow Cytometer for Stem Cell Derived Cardiomyocyte Purification.”
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan and the Chair of the Department of Dermatology Samuel Hwang have received a $70,000 one-year award from the National Psoriasis Foundation for their collaborative project: "An experimental mouse model to understand the pathological role of high fat, high sugar (Western) diet in psoriasiform dermatitis."
  • The site PI for the NIH’s All of Us Study at UC Davis Health, Professor Alexander Borowsky, was interviewed for Davis Media Access’ “In the Studio” production. Borowsky shares the study’s importance in advancing precision health and explains why we should all participate.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson and his team received the Innovation of the Year Award from Microscopy Today for their new Microscopy with Ultraviolet Surface Excitation (MUSE).
  • The American Association of Clinical Chemistry featured several presentations from our department at their 70th annual scientific meeting in Chicago, July 29- August 2, 2018. Associate Professor Nam Tran gave an oral presentation on combining procalcitonin and POC molecular infectious disease testing with the new “lab in a tube” (LIAT) system for antibiotic stewardship, plus a poster on the clinical significance of biotin interference on the new troponin assay. Grad student Kelly Lima did a talk on the clinical performance of the LIAT and “just-in-time” implementation for flu season.
  • On July 29-August 3, 2018, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s Conference on Folic Acid, Vitamin B12, and One Carbon Metabolism was held in Nova Scotia, organized by Distinguished Professor Ralph Green. Presentations included a keynote address by Green as well as a platform presentation from Associate Professor Kostantinos Zarbalis on the role of folic acid in neurodevelopment.
  • Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger presented two posters on “Convolutional Neural Networks to Assess Amyloid Plaques in Post-Mortem Human Brain” and “The Presence of Neuronal Proteins in Human Submandibular Glands in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients and Non-Demented Individuals” at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Chicago, the world's largest forum for the dementia research community.
  • Associate Professor Konstantinos Zarbalis received a new R21 award for $431,750 from the National Institute of Mental Health for his project "Mosaic analysis with double markers in the study of neuronal migration disorders."
  • On July 15-19, 2018, the Association of Pathology Chairs’ annual meeting in San Diego featured three posters from faculty Elham Vali Betts, Kristin Olson, and Hooman Rashidi: “Incorporating Hematology Quiz Application in Hematology Education” and “Use of Online Tools in Improving Medical Student and Resident Education in Anatomic Pathology.”
  • On June 11, Sacramento’s Channel 13 news featured the clinical chemistry section’s change to the new high-sensitivity troponin test. Our laboratory is the second in California and one of only a handful in the nation to offer this new improved test.
  • Professors Krish Krishnan and Yvonne Wan received $420,000 over 4 years via an NIH-SC3 mechanism to train under-represented minority students in their collaborative project "Effect of Western Diet in Gastrointestinal Cancer by NMR Metabolomics".
  • Professor Krish Krishnan co-authoreda new textbook with Professor Emeritus Yin Yeh from UC Davis' Dept. of Applied Science.
  • Director of Clinical Chemistry Nam Tran was featured in a Medscape video describing how biotin supplements commonly taken by patients can interfere with lab tests and confound results.
  • The department welcomed two new faculty members, Mingyu Cheng, M.D., Ph.D. and Anthony Karnezis, M.D., Ph.D.. Chen completed a fellowship in genitourinary and renal pathology at Louisiana State Univ. Health Science Center, and has a background in tissue engineering. Karnezis Is a gynecologic pathologist who was a staff scientist and previous molecular oncology fellow at the University of British Columbia.
  • Eight outstanding new housestaff joined the department in the new academic year. Residents are Alison Chan (Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine/Midwestern Univ.), Peter Conner (St. George's Univ.), Tahera Iqbal (Touro Univ.), Ryan Thomas (Florida Int'l Univ.). Fellows are Alejandro Mendoza (Cytopath), Lorne Holland (Informatics), Elham Karmangar (Surg Path), Alae Yaseen (Surg Path).
  • Resident George Gao has been selected for USCAP’s 2018 Resident Leadership Training Scholarship and will attend this special program at USCAP’s Interactive Learning Center in December.
  • Thirteen college undergraduates from across the nation joined the department as Edmondson Summer Research Interns on June 18, 2018. This 8-week mentored research experience includes a partnership with UC DavisHealth’s Prep Medico program. 2018 interns include: Aayushi Adettiwar (UCSB), Gabriella Albert (Univ. of Tampa), Eric Arauza (UCSC), Hannah Bullock (UCLA), Sakshi Das (UCSB), Claudia Espino (UCSC), Monty Khela (Case Western Reserve Univ.), Kyle McNeil (UC Davis), Julia Nguyen (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Zachary Rabow (UC Davis), Esteban Rios (Fresno Pacific Univ.), Madhav Sharma (UC Davis), Shai Tanner (CSU Long Beach).
  • The American Association of Neuropathologists annual meeting in Louisville, KY on June 7-10, 2018 featured two platform presentations from Assistant Professor Brittany Dugger, and a platform session chaired by Associate Professor Mirna Lechpammer.
  • On June 1, 2018, the department honored graduating housestaff, including residents Nima Amini, Amir Ghorbani, Jessica Rogers, and Jeanna Su; and fellows Dan Dolderer, Mahan Matin, Sasha Raymond, Jianmin Xu. Graduates will be going on to prestigious fellowships at UCLA (hematopathology), UCSD (neuropathology), Univ. of Washington (GI pathology), Univ. of Massachusetts (dermatopathology), Univ. of Miami (molecular pathology), Univ. of Alabama (molecular pathology), as well as joining pathology practice.
  • Awards at the annual housestaff graduation dinner on June 1, 2018 included Outstanding Teacher Awards to Tao Wang (faculty, anatomic pathology), John Paul Graff (faculty, clinical pathology), Debbie Pepito (staff), Sasha Raymond (fellow), Meighan Tomic (volunteer faculty, VA); Staff Support Award to Jennifer Black; Professionalism Awards to Ananya Datta Mitra (housestaff), Kristin Olson (faculty), Anna Schmidt (staff).
  • Guillermo Martinez-Torres provided graduation remarks as the department’s 2018 Pathology Distinguished Alumnus. Martinez-Torres is Vice President of the College of American Pathologists' Foundation, President of North Shore Pathologists, Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Columbia St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, and recipient of the first Raymond C. Zastrow Award from the Wisconsin Society of Pathologists (WSP) for leadership, service and advocacy.
  • On May 24, the department received a Resolution from the California Legislature to recognize 50 years of contribution to the health of the people of California as an academic department of the UC Davis School of Medicine. The Resolution was sponsored by state Senator Richard Pan and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson, was honored with2018 Chancellor’s Innovator of the Year Award at a special ceremony on May 15 for development of Microscopy with Ultraviolet Surface Excitation (MUSE).
  • 2018 medical graduate, Jun Yang Jiang received the Stowell Award for Excellence in Pathology at the annual award luncheon on May 18.
  • On May 4, Noha Mostafa and Erin Kew received their degrees in cytotechnology from the University of Nebraska College of Allied Health Professions as part of the distance learning partnership with UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
  • Medical student Amber Harmon received the highly prestigious HONORS Award from the American Society of Hematology to carry out research into CHIP (Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential). She is mentor by Distinguished Professor and Chair Emeritus Ralph Green.
  • Residency alumnus, Chris Hansen, is one of the pathologists interviewed in a recent article in Clinics in Laboratory Medicine on global health volunteerism. Hansen was the inaugural recipient of our Distinguished Alumni Award because of his dedication as a volunteer to developing the pathology specialty in Africa.
  • Associate Professor, Kristin Olson, has been elected Member-at-Large for the Undergraduate Medical Educators group in the Association of Pathology Chairs. Olson is the Instructor of Record for our pathology course for medical students.
  • The Folic Acid, Vitamin B12, and One-Carbon Metabolism Conference will take place on July 29-August 3, 2018 at the Western Shore, Nova Scotia. This course is ideal for college students and professionals at every level interested in emerging #OneCarbonMetabolism research. Our very own Distinguished Professor, Ralph Green is the co-organizer of this meeting!!
  • Residency alumus Christian Hansen is one of the pathologists interviewed in a recent article on global health volunteerism published in Clinics in Laboratory Medicine. Hansen was the inaugural recipient of the department’s Distinguished Alumni Award because of his dedication to supporting pathology practice in Africa.
  • On April 21 and 22, the California Association of Medical and Laboratory Technologists held their annual spring seminar at UC Davis Health campus.
  • Hooman Rashidi, Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education, received the Deans' Award for Excellence in Education for his innovative educational technologies and outstanding teaching contributions at the annual awards ceremony on April 10, 2018.
  • Assistant Professor, Kristin Grimsrud, will receive the American Burn Association’s Clinical Research Paper Award at their 50th Annual Meeting on April 10-13 in Chicago for her paper “Identification of Cytochrome P450 Polymorphisms in Burn Patients and Impact on Fentanyl Pharmacokinetics: A Pilot Study.” The Clinical Research Award is awarded to the best clinical research paper submitted by a non-physician.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson, will chair a new session on Microscopy, Histopathology, and Analytics at the Biophotonics Congress in Hollywood, FL on April 3-6.
  • The US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in Vancouver, BC on March 17-23, 2018 featured four posters from the department. Topics include Helicobacter pylori in renal transplant patients, clinicopathologic analysis of hepatic angiomyolipoma, MUSE microscopy applications to surgical pathology and molecular testing. Faculty include Bishop, Borowsky, Darrow, Fung, Kuang-Jen, Lechpammer, Levenson, Matsukuma, Wang and resident Amir Ghorbani.
  • On March 19, 2018, Associate Professor, Mirna Lechpammer, a platform session on Techniques at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in Vancouver, BC.
  • Associate Professor. Imran Khan taught a week-long course on personalized medicine at Pakistan’s Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) to residents, fellows, and practicing physicians in mid-March. This program complements Khan’s USAID grant on tuberculosis research in collaboration with AFIP of Pakistan.
  • Match Day revealed four outstanding new residents who will be joining the department in July: Alison Chan (Chicago Osteopathic College of Medicine), Peter Conner (St. George's University), Tahera Iqbal (Touro University), and Ryan Thomas (Florida International University).
  • UC Davis Health’s 8th Annual Quality Forum on March 15, 2018 featured five posters and one platform presentation from multi-disciplinary teams of pathologists, clinical lab scientists, information technology staff, and clinicians. Topics included improvements from new tests like high-sensitivity troponin, and molecular point-of-care testing for infections, and better methods to detect fecal occult blood, improve blood bank workflows, and minimize complications from transfusions.
  • Chair Lydia Howell is the new President-elect of the Association of Pathology Chairs, effective July 1, 2018.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan is the recipient of an NCI R01 grant award in the amount of $2,117,911 for her project “Liver Cancer Therapy by MiR-22 and Its Inducers.”
    Residency program director Hooman Rashidi’s new top-ranked app HemeQuiz 1 is featured in a news story on UC Davis Health’s homepage.
  • Mirna Lechpammer published a chapter on “Induction and Assessment of Hypoxia in Glioblastoma In Vitro” in the new textbook, Glioblastoma, published by Springer.
  • An editorial on the job outlook for residents by Distinguished Professor Ralph Green and faculty colleagues Hooman Rashidi and Michael Hogarth is available as an online early release in the journal, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
  • Assistant Professor, Sarah Barnhard was chosen by UC Davis Health’s Information Technology group as their 2017 Hospital & Specialty Physician Champion of the Year for her leadership in the implementation of the Mediware HCLL Transfusion Module, the transition to the new Factor Xa test for heparin monitoring, and for developing the strategy and criteria for the Transfusing Wisely program to ensure effective ordering of red blood cells.
  • Our pathology course for medical students, PMD 410, is once again ranked by students as number one among all 25 preclinical courses for the 2016-2017 academic year. General Pathology and/or Systemic Pathology has occupied the top two rankings for each of the past three years.
  • On January 22, 2018, Vice Chair of Research, Yvonne Wan, chaired a session on Human Disease and spoke on "Bile Acids are the Intrinsic Links for Western Diet to Induce NASH" at the Bilateral Joint Symposium on the Genome, Glycome, and Microbiome of Plants and Animals co-sponsored by UC Davis and Taiwan's Academia Sinica.
  • The department hosted five South Korean students studying clinical laboratory science at Jinju University for a two-week experience, January 15-26, 2018.
  • Assistant professor, Sarah Barnhard, received the 2017 Hospital and Physician Champion of the Year Award from the UC Davis Health’s Information Technology team for her contributions implementing the new blood bank lab information system, transitioning to the new anti-Xa test for heparin testing, and for developing strategy and criteria for the Transfusing Wisely program.

2017

  • Chair Emeritus, Robert Cardiff is the 2018 recipient of the Distinguished Emeritus Professor Award from the UC Davis Emeriti Association.
  • Undergraduate Aman Zadran and his mentor, Professor Emeritus Gerald Kost, received the inaugural Best Poster Award at UC Davis’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference in November. Their poster “Globally Optimizing Public Health Resilience Through Point-of-Care Testing for Infectious Diseases: Implementation for Prevention and Intervention in Vietnam” was supported in part by a UC Davis Undergraduate International Travel Award.
  • Richard Levenson, Professor and Vice Chair of Strategic Technology, will give a webinar for Photonics Media on “The MUSE Microscope for Advancing Light Microscopy” on January 16, 2017. The novel MUSE microscope was developed at UC Davis.
  • The Heme Quiz App developed by Vice Chair of Graduate Medical Education, Hooman Rashidi isnow available on iTunes in over 30 languages. This new app is a complement to Rashidi's famous on-line Hematology Outlines Atlas which is considered the gold standard for board preparation in hematology. Sixteen UC Davis faculty and residents contributed content to this app.
  • Residency and fellowship alumnus, Guillermo Martinez-Torres, is the inaugural recipient of the Raymond Zastrow Leadership Award from the Wisconsin Society of Pathologists. Martinez-Torres completed his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology in 1993, and forensic fellowship in 1994.
  • Department Chair Lydia Howell received the Papanicolaou Award and delivered the Papanicolaou Address at the American Society of Cytopathology’s 65th annual meeting in Phoenix, AZ, November 10-13, 2017. The Papanicolaou Award is the society’s highest honor and is presented annually to a physician or Ph.D. member in recognition of meritorious contributions in the field of cytopathology.
  • Associate professor Mirna Lechpammer was a speaker at the Sacramento Brain Freeze event on a November 4, 2017. This “polar plunge” event raises awareness and resources to fund critical brain tumor-specific programs to improve the lives of all those affected by brain tumors, and is hosted by the National Brain Tumor Society.
  • Associate professor Kuang-Yu Jen presented three posters at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting in New Orleans, October 31-November 5, 2017: “Histologic Findings on Time-Zero Allograft Biopsies Correlate with Kidney Donor Profile Index (KDPI) and 30-Day Serum Creatinine”, “Variable Presentation and Histologic Findings in JC Nephropathy”, “Predominantly Vascular AL Amyloidosis Mimicking Vascular Hyalinosis on Renal Biopsy: A Diagnostic Pitfall”.
  • On October 27, 2017, two pathologist alumni of UC Davis School of Medicine medical school and residency program were honored by the Alumni Association. Vice Chair of Undergraduate Medical Education, Regina Gandour-Edwards, received the Distinguished Alumni Award, and Jose Galvez, Chief of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Biomedical Translational Research Information System, received the Transformational Leadership Award.
  • Resident Amir Ghorbani gave a platform presentation on dermatopathology applications of the UC Davis-developed MUSE microscope at the American Society of Dermatopathology's annual meeting in Baltimore, MD on October 26-29, 2017.
  • Director of Clinical Chemistry and Point-of-Care Testing Nam Tran hosted the first annual Sacramento Valley Point of Care Testing annual meeting at UC Davis Medical Center on October 12, 2017.
  • Associate Professor James Chan presented "Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) based detection of small molecule interactions with amyloid beta" at the SCIX Conference in Reno, NV, 10/8-13.
  • Two posters from our GI pathology team were featured at the College of American Pathologists’ Annual Meeting in Washington DC, October 8-11, 2017. Assistant professor Karen Matsukuma presented “Triaging Patients with Advanced Gastroesophageal/Gastric Adenocarcinoma for Trastuzumab Therapy: Is Her2 Immunostaining Enough?” Assistant professor Dorina Gui was the senior author on poster “Autologous Graft vs Host Disease Involving the Gastrointestinal Tract Following Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation.” Co-authors included resident Dongguang Wu, associate professor Kristin Olson, and molecular lab supervisor Sandy Hatcher.
  • Resident Andy Jones and Assistant Professor Sarah Barnhard presented a poster “Auto Anti-E in a Case of a Two-Month Old Male: A Case of IPEX” at the American Association of Blood Banks’ annual meeting in San Diego, October 7-10, 2017.
  • Resident George Gao is the recipient of a Trainee Travel Award from the California Society of Pathologists (CSP) to attend their annual meeting in San Francisco, November 28 - December 2. At the meeting, he will get to meet with the CSP President, attend the Business Meeting/Legislative Update and Trainee Mixer, and more.
  • Professor Hwai-Jong Cheng received a new R01 award for $312,000 for his project “Neuronal Integration of Newborn Granule Cells in Aged Brains.” Cheng is a member of UC Davis’ Center for Neuroscience, and has a joint appointment in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences.
  • Professor Lee-Way Jin will lead the neuropathology studies in a newly funded $13 million multi-center project “Epidemiology of Age-related Dementia, Mild Cognitive Impairment and Brain Pathology in a Multiethnic Cohort of Oldest-Old”. Funded by a R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging, investigators from the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center and UC Irvine will work with project leader Rachel Whitmer at Kaiser Foundation Research Institute. The goal is to redefine knowledge of dementia and brain pathology in the oldest-old, provide new insights into early life risk and protective factors, uncover etiological underpinnings, and provide a framework for future studies of prevention of late-onset dementia and cognitive impairment in a multiethnic cohort.
  • Chair Lydia Howell visited the University of Minnesota on September 12-14, 2017. She was a Visiting Scholar for the Women in Leadership Program and spoke on “Creating an Academic Culture for Success: Finding from a Four-Year NIH-Funded Career Flexibility Study.” She also gave a grand rounds so the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine on “Growing Our Own in Academic Pathology: Faculty Development, Leadership and Diversity.”
  • Associate professor Christopher Polage was honored as a Choosing Wisely Champion and participated in the panel discussion “Choosing Wisely Champions Bring Collaboration Center Stage: Influencing Practices and Demonstrating Outcomes” on September 8, 2017 at the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s annual meeting in Chicago.
  • On September 7, 2017, resident Ananya Datta Mitra presented a poster “B-Lymphoblastic Leukemia with Aberrant T-cell (CD-5) Expression: A Rare Entity” at the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s annual meeting in Chicago.
  • Residency program director Hooman Rashidi gave a presentation “Integrating Technology Tools into Medical Education” at UCLA on August 28, 2017. He will be giving a repeat performance at the University of Florida, Jacksonville on September 18, 2017.
  • Associate Professor, Izumi Maezawa, received a new $1.6M R01 award from the National Institutes of Health for her project “Mitochondrial ROS and Microglia in Rett Syndrome”. She and her team will pursue a mitochondria-targeting anti-oxidation strategy to treat Rett Syndrome, a childhood autism spectrum disorder currently with no cure.
  • Post-doctoral fellow, Fabian Lara, M.D., received the award for best abstract in Critical Care Point of Care Testing at the 69th meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry in San Diego, July 30-August 3. Lara is a mentee of clinical chemistry director Nam Tran.
  • Professor Alexander Borowsky is the UC Davis site PI on the UC-wide study, Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM) which is funded by $14.1 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute that seeks to determine whether mammograms or a more personalized approach driven by the data attached to each woman’s genetic makeup, family history and risk factors are more effective to screen for breast cancer.
  • On July 25, residency program director Hooman Rashidi and pathology course director Kristin Olson shared posters on the integration of technological tools in housestaff education, and on weekly clinicopathological conferences as a means of teaching clinical fellows at the Association of Pathology Chairs' 50th annual meeting in Washington DC.
  • Pathology course director Kristin Olson led a session on “Melding of Basic Biomedical Science and Clinical Medicine in the Fourth Year of Medical School” on June 26 at the Association of Pathology Chairs' 50th annual meeting in Washington DC.
  • Chair Lydia Howell co-directed the Pathology Leadership Academy and Chair’s Bootcamp at the Association of Pathology Chairs 50th annual meeting in Washington DC.
  • The department welcomed five new faculty members for the new academic year: John Paul Graff (Informatics, Hemepath), Kristin Grimsrud (Mouse Biology Program), Nam Ku (Hemepath), Grace Monis (transfusion, apheresis, coagulation), David Unold (transfusion, apheresis, coagulation).
  • Associate Professor Eric Huang is one of three finalists chosen to compete in the Young Investigator “Shark Tank” at the American Society of Cytopathology’s annual meeting in November. His project includes a unique collaboration with associate professor James Chan, the PI for our NSF-funded Center for Biophotonics Sensors and Systems.
  • Former faculty member, Josh Miller, now the Chair of the Dept. of Nutritional Sciences at Rutgers University, is returning to UC Davis Health on June 29 to give a free public lecture on the role of vitamins in preventing Alzheimer’s disease at 6 p.m. at the UC Davis MIND Institute as part of the 2017 Community Engagement Learning Series.
  • Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Diaz- Khansefid is President of the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Research Administrators and hosted the chapter’s very first annual meeting on the UC Davis campus on 6/15-16. The meeting included 140+ participants and 17 speakers from across the University of California.
  • Faculty member, Mirna Lechpammer, accepted the prestigious Moore Award on behalf of the research team for the best clinicopathologic paper for the application of the innovative MUSE microscope to neuropathology at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neuropathology’s annual meeting, June 8-11, 2017.
  • Chief Resident, Nick Coley, received the Richard Davis Travel Award to attend the American Association of Neuropathology’s annual meeting, June 8-11, 2017 where he gave a platform presentation on his work using MUSE in neuropathology.
  • Vice Chair of Research, Yvonne Wan, and her team demonstrated that gender differences in mice microbiota can modulate the risk of developing metabolic disease and liver cancer. Their work was recently published in the journal, Science Reports.
  • Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño and other faculty scholars from UC Davis’ Center for Advancing Multi-cultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS) met with California State Senator Bill Dodd during the second week of May to advocate for more funding to support UC Davis graduate students.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green’s recently published article, “Vitamin B12 deficiency from the perspective of a practicing hematologist” was featured in “This Week in ‘Blood’”, a snapshot of the hottest studies from each week’s issue, hand-picked by the editors.
  • Associate Professor Nam Tran is the UC Davis site principle investigator for a new $303,000 subcontract from the United States Air Force to the University of Cincinnati for their collaborative project “Expeditionary Medicine, Trauma, and En Route Care Research and Technology Development.”
  • Eric Huang and Regina Gandour-Edwards shared their poster “Patient-Derived Organoid Research Using Resource at UC Davis Cancer Center Biorepository” at the at the annual meeting for the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) , May 9-12 in Toronto, Canada.
  • Professor Lee-Way Jin and Associate Professor Izumi Maezawa have received three new grants to support research on Alzheimer’s disease: 1) A NIH SBIR phase II two-year award entitled “Development of patented tricyclic pyrones molecules for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease” will provide $590,734 for rat model experiments; 2) A two-year $2 million award from the Alzheimer’s Association “Part the Cloud Challenge” to fund a Phase IIb clinical trial of Senicapoc; 3) An Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation Award for $350,000 to fund the manufacture of Senicapoc for the above clinical trial at UC Davis’ Good Manufacturing Practices Laboratory.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan's undergraduate mentee, Nidhi Nagar, was awarded first place in the 31st Annual CSU Student Research Competition for her work "Role of bacteria and bacterial metabolites in development of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis."
  • Resident Amir Ghorbani has been selected by the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology to serve a two-year term as UC Davis Medical Center’s Ambassador to influence engagement with pathologists-in-training and young practitioners with the academy.
  • Resident Andy Jones received $500 award as the first runner up for UC Davis Health’s Noel Foundation Award which honors a housestaff member for an outstanding research presentation at a national meeting.
  • Kelly Lima, Associate Professor Nam Tran’s Ph.D. student mentee, received the Albert T. McManus Award for her plenary talk on the use of next generation sequencing to characterize the burn unit microbiome at the 49th annual American Burn Association meeting in Boston, March 21-24.
  • In March, the 49th annual American Burn Association meeting in Boston featured three additional presentations from Nam Tran’s Point of Care Testing team. Research assistant Rachel Caynak presented a study verifying the American Burn Association Sepsis Consensus Guidelines, Tran shared outcomes from his multicenter clinical trial funded by the Department of Defense on the impact of rapid molecular pathogen detection in severely burned patients, and post-doctoral fellow Fabian Lara presented a poster on point-of-care spectrophotometric vs. conductance-based hemoglobinometry in the perioperative burn setting.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan signed a Collaboration of Agreement on behalf of UC Davis with Taipei Medical University (TMU) through which TMU will provide annual support for research collaborations as well as faculty and students exchanges, joint seminars and international conferences.
  • The Point of Care Team, led by director Nam Tran, and their collaborators at the UC Davis and Shriner’s Burn Units, had several presentations and awards at the 49th annual American Burn Association meeting in Boston, March 21-24. Ph.D. student Kelly Lima received the Albert T. McManus Award for her plenary talk on the use of next generation sequencing to characterize the burn unit microbiome. Research asst. Rachel Caynak presented a study verifying the American Burn Association Sepsis Consensus Guidelines. Tran shared outcomes from his multicenter clinical trial funded by the Dept. of Defense on the impact of rapid molecular pathogen detection in severely burned patients. Post-doc Fabian Lara, M.D. presented a poster on the use of POC spectrophotometric- vs. conductance-based hemoglobinometry in the perioperative burn setting.
  • The Dean's Annual Awards honored three department members. Mentoring directors Hanne Jensen and Lee-Way Jin received the Dean's Award for Department Mentoring. Chair Lydia Howell was a recipient of the Dean's Team Award for Inclusion Excellence as a member of the research team examining women's careers in biomedical services.
  • Vice Chair for Research Yvonne Wan’s mentee, Nidhi Nagar, a master degree student at California State University, Sacramento, has been selected to compete at the Statewide Student Research Competition held April 28-29 at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. The title of her thesis is "Role of bacteria and bacterial metabolites in the development of metabolic diseases."
  • The US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in San Antonio on March 4-10 featured two posters from UC Davis. Resident Andy Jones presented "Microfollicular Pattern and Absence of Pseudoinclusions Are Common Cytologic Characteristic in Non-invasive Follicular Thyroid Neoplasms with Papillary-Like Nuclear Features" and resident Ananya Datta Mitra presented "Increased Expression of LOX-1: A Potential Biomarker for Tumor Angiogenesis and Metastasis”. Faculty mentors for these projects included Ralph Green, Mingyi Chen, Alaa Afify, Eric Huang, Yanhong Zhang.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies Richard Levenson has received a $1.3 million NIH R33 award for his project “Cancer histology and QC via MUSE: Sample-sparing UV surface-excitation microscopy.”
  • The US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in San Antonio, TX featured three posters from members of our department. Resident Andy Jones presented "Microfollicular Pattern and Absence of Pseudoinclusions Are Common Cytologic Characteristic in Non-invasive Follicular Thyroid Neoplasms with Papillary-Like Nuclear Features" and resident Ananya Datta Mitra presented "Increased Expression of LOX-1: A Potential Biomarker for Tumor Angiogenesis and Metastasis”. Associate Professor Kuang-Yu Jen presented “Genomic Profiling of Synchronous Bilateral Lobular Carcinoma”.
  • Professor Richard Levenson's article on MUSE microscopy was the most popular in 2016 in SPIE digital library's Biomedical Optics and Medical Imaging category.
  • On February 16, 2017, Vice Chair of Information Services Mike Hogarth spoke as a panelist on “Big Data: Using Data to Drive Quality - A Scientific Approach to Improve Outcomes and Reduce Costs” at the colloquium UC Health and the National Quality Agenda: An Opportunity in San Francisco, CA.
  • Associate Professor Kristin Olson is one of 30 mid-career women selected by our campus to participate in the University of California’s Women’s Initiative for Professional Development.
  • Associate Professor Kuang-Yu Jen is the author of several chapters in the new second edition of the highly regarded textbook, Silva's Diagnostic Renal Pathology.
  • Associate Professor, James Chan, is the PI on the newly funded 5-year NSF Phase II award for $500,000 to support our Center for Biophotonics Sensors and Systems (CBSS). Established in 2011 as a NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Center in collaboration with Boston University, CBSS is part of a national photonics consortium enabling technologies to detect, sense, identify and understand biological properties, conditions or changes at the molecular, cellular and subcellular level.
  • Vice Chair of Information Services, Michael Hogarth, received a contract from the state of Maryland, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Public Health Services for $222,252 to support the Maryland Electronic Death Registry System (EDRS) Project. This project is modeled after the State of California’s innovative EDRS developed and implemented by Hogarth’s team.
  • Our department raised over $3,200 to donate to charity during our holiday Star Giving program. Faculty, staff, housestaff and others purchased stars to honor colleagues and co-workers with proceeds going to four designated charities in our community.

2016

  • Director of Apheresis, Leonor Fernando, received the Apheresis Practitioner Qualification from the ASCP’s Board of Certification. This new qualification was introduced in January 2016; Fernando is among the first group of practitioners to receive this new credential.
  • Assistant Professor, Mirna Lechpammer, presented a poster “Cystathione B-synthetase Expression in Astrocytomas Increases with Histologic Grade” at the Society of Neuro-oncology meeting in Scottsdale, AZ on November 18, 2016.
  • On November 19, 2016, faculty members Denis Dwyre and Leonor Fernando attended the meeting of The Northern California chapter of the American College of Physicians in San Jose which included a poster on a "cool" case of cryoglobinemia from pathology mentors Dwyre and Fernando with internal medicine resident Michael Chew. Pathology resident Ananya Datta Mitra was a co-author on a poster with internal medicine resident Stacey Howell on an unusual case of a mitral valve lesion.
  • Department chair Lydia Howell's medical student mentees, Kristine Miller and Diana Ha, gave a platform presentation at the American Society of Cytopathology’s annual meeting entitled "Impact of a Community Education Program to Promote Pap Test Screening Among Asian-American Women".
  • The American Society of Cytopathology featured two workshops led by our faculty at their annual scientific meeting in New Orleans, November 10-13, 2016. Assistant professor Eric Huang presented a workshop on management guidelines for abnormal Pap tests, and chair Lydia Howell led a panel luncheon on laboratory leadership.
  • Faculty and housestaff collaborated on the poster presented by resident Andy Jones and Sarah Barnhard at the AABB Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida last week, “Therapeutic Plasma Exchange in Carfilzomib-Induced Thrombotic Microangiopathy.” Also at the AABB meeting Barnhard and Grace Monis presented their poster, “Vancomycin induced immunologic thrombocytopenia masquerading as post-transfusion purpura: a diagnostic pitfall.”
  • Mike Hogarth, Vice Chair of Information Services is the UC Davis site PI for the new California Precision Medicine Consortium. Under Hogarth’s leadership, UC Davis joins a national network of health care provider organizations implementing the NIH's Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program.
  • As the winner of the Nature Reviews photo contests, images from professor Richard Levenson’s innovative MUSE microscope will be featured on the 2017 covers of Nature Reviews Nephology and Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology.
  • Clinical Chemistry Director Nam Tran and UC Davis Regional Burn Unit Director Tina Palmieri received a $110,000 Shriners Hospital pilot grant for their study "Cytochrome P450 Variants During Opiate Therapy in Burned Children". Their goal is to define a screening tool to optimize opioid/opiate therapy in these high risk populations.
  • Residents Jessica Rogers and Dongguang Wei presented posters at the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting in Las Vegas, September 26-29, 2016. Rogers presented “Disseminated Peritoneal Leiomyomatosis: A Complication of Uterine Morcellation”. Wei presented two posters: “Primary Undifferentiated Pleomorphic Sarcoma of Spleen: A Rare Localization and Review of the Literature” and “Primary Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma of Breast with Bone Marrow Metastases Mimicking Acute Leukemia: A Diagnostic Challenge.”
  • Resident Amir Ghorbani presented “BRAF Mutations” and “Centronuclear Myopathy” at the XXXI International Congress of the International Academy of Pathology and 28th Congress of the European Society of Pathology in Cologne, Germany, September 26-29, 2016.
  • Professor Emeritus Gerald Kost is the recipient of UC Davis’ Edward Dickson’s Emeriti Professorship for 2016-17 to support his project “Preparedness for Highly Infectious Threats (Ebola Virus Disease, MERS-CoV, Others): Environmental Robustness of Point-of-Care WBCs and Differential Counts Used in Early Detection.”
  • Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño received a $1.9M competitive renewal for her project “Chandellier interneurons and the excitation/inhibition balance in the human prefrontal cortex in autism” from the National Institute of Mental Health.
  • Residents Saba Ali and Nima Amini presented posters at the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s annual meeting in Las Vegas, September 14-16, 2016. Ali’s poster was "Atypical Marginal Zone Hyperplasia (MZH) Is. a Mimic for Marginal Zone Lymphoma (MZL) in Pediatric Patients." Amini’s poster was "Mast Cell Rich Leiomyoma as a Mimic of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor."
  • On August 31-September 1, Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan was an invited participant at a workshop at the National Cancer Institute on “Modulation of Anti-tumor Immune Responses by Diet- and Microbiome-derived Metabolites”.
  • On July 10, 2016, residency and fellowship alumnus Jose Galvez was appointed Chief of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center’s Biomedical Translational Research Information System, a resource supporting clinical research studies across the NIH’s Intramural Research Program and interfacing with extramural investigators. As part of this position, Galvez has a dual appointment with the National Library of Medicine.
  • Professor Jeffrey Gregg shared "Laboratory Management Experiences at UC Davis Medical Center and UC Health” at the 2016 International Hospital CEO Forum hosted by Shanghai No.6 People’s Hospital Medical Group, one of the leading medical groups in China. Over 250 international experts, hospital directors and managers attend yearly to promote innovation, efficiency, and increase patients’ satisfaction.
  • Professor Richard Levenson has received a “STAIR” (Science Translation and Innovative Research) award two years in a row from the UC Davis Venture Catalyst program. One of four awards for 2016-17, Levenson and colleagues have created a new method utilizing a novel camera sensor for spectral imaging that drastically reduces the amount of data needed for analysis.
  • Associate professor Hooman Rashidi has been chosen by the American Board of Pathology to serve as an item writer and reviewer for their Maintenance of Certification (MOC) CertLink Assessment pilot. Representing the next generation of MOC Assessment, this pilot is being developed as an option in lieu of the MOC Part III exam.
  • Assistant professor Nam Tran, Point-of-Care supervisor Nancy Lambuth and post-doc Fabian Lara presented their poster “Clinical Significance of Accurate Total Hemoglobin Measurements” at the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry on August 1 in Philadelphia.
  • Professor Regina Gandour-Edwards is among the first 14 pathologists chosen to provide telepathology consultations to Rwanda as part of the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s new Partners for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment program in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation.
  • Congrats to our very own Peter Barry and his colleague Alice Tarantal at the California National Primate Center received an R21 grant entitled "Leveraging Established Fetal Primate Models to Expedite ZIKV Investigations", funded by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs of NIH. The grant was in response to an RFA entitled "Rapid Assessment of ZIKV Complications" and was based on the rhesus macaque model of intrauterine human cytomegalovirus pioneered by Barry and Tarantal.
  • The Association of Pathology Chairs’ annual meeting featured several presentations by UC Davis faculty on July 12-15, 2016. Yvonne Wan shared “GI Specimen Biobanking: Opportunities for Best-Practices and Microbiota-related Research” and Richard Levenson presented “What’s Old and New in Optical Microscopy.” Bennet Omalu gave the closing address “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: A Journey from Pathology Discovery to Advocacy and Beyond.”
  • Faculty members Yvonne Wan and Dorina Gui participated in the first Pathology Leadership Academy sponsored by the Association of Pathology Chairs on July 11-12, 2016 in San Diego, CA. Chair Lydia Howell was co-director of the course.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan was honored with the Outstanding Alumni Award in recognition of her academic achievements at the Taipei Medical University’s 56th anniversary celebration.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan was an invited participant at a 2-day workshop organized by the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) on “State of the Science of CAM Cancer Therapeutics.” She will participate in writing a white paper addressing current progress and status of CAM cancer therapeutic research, scientific gaps and opportunities, and solutions worth exploring for future progress.
  • On June 15, 2016, faculty members Sarah Barnhard and Chris Polage served as panelists at the Dean’s Strategic Plan retreat to provide the perspective of early- and mid-career faculty. Chair Lydia Howell co-moderated the session.
  • Ten outstanding college students joined the department as the 2016 Edmondson Summer Research Interns. These talented and diverse students represent colleges in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina Ohio, Oklahoma, as well as California.
  • Assistant professor Nam Tran received a 2015 Outstanding Speaker Award for 2015 from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) recognizing his high rankings as a speaker during a 2015 continuing education activity accredited by AACC.
  • Xenia Ivanova, an undergrad biomedical engineering major mentored by pathology faculty members Nam Tran and Jeff Gregg, is the recipient of a UC Davis Provost Undergraduate Fellowship to study cytochrome P450 polymorphisms in opioid therapy.
  • Professor Emeritus Gerald Kost received an Outstanding Speaker Award from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry for his outstanding contributions to continuing education.
  • Chair Lydia Howell served as a panelist at the NIH Conference on Evidence-Based Innovations to Support Women in Biomedical Research Careers on June 6, 2016 in Bethesda, Maryland.
  • Chair Lydia Howell was the keynote speaker for residency graduation at Temple University Hospital on June 2, 2016. She spoke on “Growing Our Own in Academic Pathology: Faculty Development, Leadership, and Diversity.”
  • Big congrats to our very own Assistant Professor Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño -- she has been selected as a Scholar in the Center for Advancing Multi-cultural Perspectives in Science (CAMPOS)! This award includes support from the Provost for five years – we’re proud and delighted for Martínez-Cerdeño!!
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green is a Visiting Professor for the month of May at Denmark's Aarhus University. His visit includes lectures on ”The NIH Grant Funding System: Some facts with special emphasis on Foreign Applicants” and “Responsible conduct of research: Prevention is better than cure”.
  • Three members of the department received awards at the annual Employee Excellence and Diversity Celebration Breakfast on May 9, 2016. Edwin Villadolid received an award for Excellence in Teamwork/Collaboration. Cathy Diaz-Khansefid and Hooman Rashidi received awards for Excellence in Leadership.
  • Transfusion fellow Grace Monis, M.D., Ph.D., presented a poster at the annual American Society for Apheresis Conference in Palm Springs, May 4-7 entitled "Two-for-one TPE: managing steroid resistant encephalopathy in a patient with both Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hepatitis C viremia".
  • Regina Gandour-Edwards, Professor and Vice Chair of Undergraduate Medical education, has been appointed to the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Test Material Development Committee by the National Board of Medical Examiners. Gandour-Edwards will participate in the development of test content, including the written questions, for the Pathology subject matter on Step I of this examination. The USMLE is a three-step examination for medical licensure in the United States.
  • Bob Gosselin, Senior Specialist in Coagulation, co-chaired three sessions at the Thrombosis and Hemostasis Societies of North America’s (THSNA) third comprehensive scientific meeting in Chicago, IL on April 14-16, 2016, and also served as a member of the program committee.
  • Chair Emeritus Murray Gardner has established a junior faculty research fellowship in infectious disease at the UC Davis Center for Comparative Medicine. An international leader in non-human primate study of retroviruses, Gardner made many important contributions to understanding HIV infection using macaque models during the AIDS epidemic and serves as a role model for the importance of pathologists in the multi-disciplinary study of infectious diseases.
  • Associate professor Christopher R. Polage received a Distinguished Clinical Research Award this week from the Clinical Research Forum for his innovative study that found popular molecular tests overdiagnose Clostridium difficile infections by up to 50 percent.
  • On April 5, 2016, Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the national honor society for medicine, held their 2016 Annual Councilor Meeting in San Francisco which featured presentations by professor Regina Gandour-Edwards, Councilor of the UC Davis’ AOA chapter and Councilor Director of the national AOA board. Gandour-Edwards presented on the selection process and strategies for budgeting and fund raising for local chapters. Sixty councilors from across the country attended and the discussions were robust and enthusiastic.
  • Match Day brought the department an outstanding new resident for 2016-2017. Guofeng “George” Gao, M.D., Ph.D., a graduate of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Penn State University, and served as a Research Associate at Temple University School of Medicine investigating the role of BAG3 in the development of heart failure.
  • The Dean’s Award for Departmental Excellence in Mentoring was presented to the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine on March 16, 2016. Department mentoring directors, Hanne Jensen and Lee Way Jin, accepted the award on behalf of the department at the School of Medicine’s Annual Recognition Reception.
  • UC Davis Health’s annual Quality Improvement Forum on March 16, 2016 featured posters by transfusion fellow Grace Monis on improving vascular access in photopheresis patients and by first-year resident Ananya Datta Mitra on improving patient care and costs through integrated hematopathology reports. Faculty mentors were Sarah Barnhard and Hooman Rashidi.
  • Assistant professor Sarah Barnhard was among the first class to complete UC Davis Health’s new certificate program in Health System Improvement. Barnhard received her certificate on March 16, 2016 at the annual Quality Improvement Forum.
  • Hematopathology fellowship alumnus Benjamin Durham, M.D., received the 2016 Benjamin Castleman Award at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology in Seattle, Washington from March 12-18 for his publication “Diverse and Targetable Kinase Alterations Drive Histiocytic Neoplasms” published in Cancer Discovery. This award is given annually for an outstanding paper in the field of human pathology published in English. Durham is currently a genomics pathology research fellow in molecular oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran was a featured speaker at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry's Northern California meeting on March 10 in Berkeley. The title of his presentation was "Early Recognition of Infection via Molecular Pathogen Detection and Sepsis Biomarker Testing".
  • Faculty and residents presented seven posters and a platform presentation at the US & Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in Seattle on March 12-18, 2016. First authors are resident Saba Ali, and faculty Sandy Borowsky, Dorina Gui, Mirna Lechpammer, Richard Levenson, and Kristin Olson.
  • On February 11 and 12, Department Chair Lydia Howell visited Stanford Medical Center. She gave Grand Rounds to the Department of Pathology on “Growing Our Own in Academic Pathology: Faculty Development, Leadership and Diversity” and a workshop on “Generational Conflicts in the Biomedical Workplace” sponsored by the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity.
  • Professor Maxwell Fung has been appointed to a second term on the American Board of Pathology's Test Development and Advisory Committee for Dermatopathology. Fung has a joint appointment in Dermatology and Pathology, and is chief of the Dermatopathology service.
  • For the fifth year, our department hosted clinical lab scientist students from South Korea’s Jinju University for two weeks of experience in our clinical laboratories.
  • Our department raised over $3,027 for local charities through our annual silent auction and the new “Star light, Star Bright” program which honors valued colleagues and mentors.
  • On January 21, 2016, Professor Emeritus Gerald Kost will receive the Association of Clinical Chemistry’s Northern California Section’s 2016 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry through Science/Technology to recognize his outstanding work in point of care testing, including his recent international work with Ebola testing and disaster readiness.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan spoke on "Steatosis and Liver Regeneration" at China’s National Fatty Liver Meeting in December 2015.

2015

  • Vice chair of Information Technology Michael Hogarth received a new project contract from Quantum Leap Healthcare for $295,450 for “I-SPY TRIAL, An Adaptive Breast Cancer Trial Design in the Setting of Nonadjuvant Chemotherapy.”
  • Professor Hwai-Jong Cheng is the recipient of the Excellence in Advising Award (Faculty Advisor category) for Region 9 of the National Academic Advising Association for his many contributions to students and to the advising profession as a whole.
  • Professor Peter Barry is one of four UC Davis faculty members who are newly elected as Fellows of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Honored for his work developing a vaccine for cytomegalovirus, Barry is director of the Center for Comparative Medicine, and the core scientist (and former director) at the California National Primate Research Center.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson's newly published article in PLoS One has been featured in many on-line news stories including CNN, NBC News, Popular Science, Sacramento Bee. His work shows that pigeons are a useful model that may explain how pathologists refine their cancer-identification skills over time, and what features help them make an accurate diagnosis.
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran has been appointed Associate Editor for the BMC Pharmacology and Therapeutics Journal.
  • Postdoctoral fellows in professor Yvonne Wan’s lab, Ying Hu and Hui-Xin Liu, received awards for their work at the 2015 American Association for the Study of Liver Disease’s Annual Liver Meeting in San Francisco on 11/13-17. They received the Presidential Poster of Distinction for “FGF21 facilitates normal liver regeneration and restores impaired liver regeneration in steatotic liver”, and the Young Investigator Travel Award for “Functional analysis of the relationship between intestinal microbiota and the expression of hepatic genes and pathways during the course of liver regeneration”, and also presented two other posters.
  • On November, 16, 2015, Assistant Professor Eric Huang co-led a workshop at the American Society of Cytopathology’s annual meeting in Chicago on “Updated ASCCP Consensus Management Guidelines for Women with Abnormal Cervical Cancer Screening Tests.”
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran has received a $140,000 contract from Roche for his study “Analytical performance evaluation of the ACCU-CHEK inform II system with patients in critical care settings using capillary samples.”
  • Resident Jessica Rogers has been appointed as a member of UC Davis Health’ Graduate Medical Education Committee with full voting privileges.
  • Four posters were presented by department members at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Pathology in Long Beach on October 28-31, and two were finalists for awards. Assistant Professor Kristin Olson’s poster “Teaching and Assessing Professionalism, Interpersonal and Communication Skills, and Systems-Based Practice in the Pathology Course for First- and Second-Year Medical Students” was a finalist for Best Educational poster. Resident Nicholas Coley was finalist in the Scientific category for his poster “Interactions Between Mechanosensory Hair Cells and Support Cells of the Zebrafish Lateral Line During Development, Death, and Regeneration.” Resident Jessica Rogers presented “Xanthomatous Pseudotumor as a Rare Cause of Small Bowel Obstruction and Mimic of Malignancy” and Ruijun Su present “CD123 Is a Useful Marker for Prediction of Clinical Outcome and Risk Stratification for Prognosis in Leukemia Patients.”
  • Chair Lydia Howell and Professor Regina Gandour-Edwards presented a workshop on culture change at the American Pathology Foundation’s program during the American Society of Clinical Pathology’s annual meeting in Long Beach, California, October 28-31.
  • Associate Clinical Professor Bennet I. Omalu has been named a 2015 Health Hero by WebMD for his work identifying chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disorder which he first identified in retired football players and wrestlers.
  • Assistant Professor Sarah Barnhard has been accepted to the inaugural class of UC Davis Health's Certificate Program in Healthcare Improvement.
  • Resident Ananya Datta Mitra and her faculty mentors, Hooman Rashidi and Ralph Green, have received one of eight awards from the UC Davis Health GME High Value Care Competition for their project “Implementation of integrated hematopathological services: to improve patient care and reduce cost."
  • Resident Saba Ali presented two posters at the College of American Pathologists’ annual meeting in Nashville, October 4-7: “Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) -Associated Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis: A Report Of Two Cases And A Review Of The Literature” and “Monomorphic B-cell Post Transplant Lymphoproliferative Disorder (PTLD) with Concurrent Plasmacytoma-like and Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma.”
  • Vice Chair of Undergraduate Medical Education Regina Gandour-Edwards has been appointed to a three-year term of the national executive board of Alpha Omega Alpha. Gandour-Edwards is the Councilor for the UC Davis Alpha Omega Alpha chapter.
  • Former Chief Resident Christina Di Loreto is the recipient of the 2015 Housestaff Professionalism Award from the UC Davis School of Medicine Alumni Association. Di Loreto is now a forensic pathology fellow at the San Diego Coroner’s Office.
  • Mike Hogarth, UC Davis site PI, and co-site PI Nick Anderson, have received over $309,000 from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute for the second phase of pSCANNER, the nation’s largest and most diverse clinical outcomes research network.
  • Vice Chair of Undergraduate Medical Education Regina Gandour-Edwards received the Raible Distinguished Teaching Award at the annual meeting of the Association of Pathology Chairs on July 15 for her many national contributions to pathology education.
  • Department Chair Lydia Howell has been elected the chair of the Association of Pathology Chair’s new Leadership Development and Diversity Committee. In this role, Howell serves on the APC’s executive council.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson is the recipient of one of four STAIR grants from UC Davis' Venture Catalyst program for his project "Microscopy with Ultraviolet Surface Excitation for Slide-free Pathology."
  • Assistant Professor M. Meighan Tomic has been accepted as a participant in the 2015-16 UC Davis Health’s Inter-Professional Teaching Scholars Program.
  • Medical student Dane Jackson received the Stowell Award for Outstanding Student in Pathology, and medical student Mike Spiker was honored with a scholarship in the memory of pathology professor emeritus Simon J. T. Lie at the 2015 Medical Student and Faculty Awards Luncheon on May 29, 2015.
  • Bob Gosselin, Specialist in Clinical and Applied Hemostasis and Thrombosis, has been elected to the Board of the International Society for Laboratory Hematology and has also been appointed as an Associate Editor for the journal, Laboratory Hematology.
  • Three posters from department members were presented at the American Society for Apheresis in San Antonio, May 6-9. Presenters included Transfusion Medicine Fellow, Sarah Barnhard and Faculty Member, Leonor Fernando along with mentee, 2014 Edmondson Fellow Adriana Morales.
  • Hematopathology Fellow, Rebecca Sonu attend the 2015 Pathology Informatics Summit in Pittsburgh, May 5-8, as the recipient of a Becich Family Trust Travel Scholarship.
  • Assistant Professor Kristin Olson is the 2015 recipient of the Kaiser Award for “Excellence in Teaching in Clinical Sciences (full-time faculty).” This award recognizes outstanding teaching qualities including enthusiasm, sincere interest in and willingness to help students and house officers, ability to motivate learning and the quality of teaching aids.
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran received a new clinical service agreement from Diazyme Inc. to examine point of care clinical sensitivity.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan published two major papers on molecular regulation of cell growth, repair, and cancer development in Oncotarget and the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
  • Match Day brings three outstanding new residents to our department. We look forward to welcoming Andrew Jones (Univ. of Vermont), Trevor Starnes (UC Davis), Dongguang Wei (UC Davis-ENT).
  • Chair Lydia Howell shared findings on how medical schools can support career flexibility for biomedical faculty at a national conference sponsored by the American Council on Education and the New England Network for Faculty Affairs.
  • On March 12, Assistant Professor Christopher Polage gave two presentations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta: ‘Preliminary Results from the UC Davis STOP C. difficile Project’ for the 2015 CDC Prevention Epicenters Annual Grantee Meeting, and ‘Outcomes in Clostridium difficile patients with negative toxin immunoassay results’ the Clinical and Environmental Microbiology Branch of the CDC’s Division of Healthcare and Quality Promotion.
  • Vice Chair of Information Technology Michael Hogarth, a leader in big data management for clinical use and research, has received a $8.5 million contract from the California Department of Public Health to develop and run the state’s electronic death registries and vital records systems.
  • First place winner of the medical students’ annual Research Poster Day went to Lucy Ogbu-Nwobodu for her poster with pathology mentors Mingyi Chen and Ralph Green, “The role of Lectin-like oxidized receptor (LOX-1) in the pathogenesis of sickle cell disease vasculopathy.”
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technology, Richard Levenson presented two papers on “Translation of immunophotonic cancer therapy: from mouse to human to cat” and “MUSE: deep UV excitation microscopy for imaging of exogenous fluorophores in tissue with applications in histology and pathology” at SPIE’s Photonics West Conference in San Francisco on February 9-10, 2015. On February 16, Levenson presented “Microscopy with UV Surface Excitation (MUSE): Towards Slide-Free Pathology” at Cambridge Health Institute’s Molecular Med Tri-Conference in San Francisco.
  • Vice Chair of Undergraduate Medical Education Regina Gandour-Edwards is the 2015 recipient of the Michele Raible Award for Distinguished Teaching by the Association of Pathology Chairs (APC), the highest award for undergraduate medical education nationally. She will be formally presented with this award at the APC’s annual meeting in July.
  • On December 10, 2014, Chief Resident Christina Di Loreto gave an invited presentation on a diving fatality investigation at the California Association of Criminalists seminar.
  • Assistant Professor Mirna Lechpammer received a $50,000 philanthropic gift in collaboration with David Zagzag, M.D. at New York University's Langone Medical Center for their research on pediatric brain injury caused by oxygen and blood flow impairment.
  • $130,900 was awarded in the department's 2014-15 Seed Grant program. Biomedical research awards of $30,000 each went to Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño and Izumi Maezawa for projects on autism and Rett syndrome, Anna Romanelli received a $7,900 clinical research award for a new molecular assay for fungal infection, Mirna Lechpammer received a $60,000 program project award for a novel therapeutic target for disabilities in perinatal hypoxic brain injury, and Jeanna Su received a $3,000 resident research award to develop genetic engineered therapy for chronic immune thrombocytopenia.

2014

  • Assistant Professor Mingyi Chen received a UC Davis Collaborative Institutional Research Pilot Grant for Investigators in Oncology for his project "The Role of p53-RBM38 Axis in Regulating Normal and Malignant Hematopoiesis." This grant builds on Chen's collaborative work with vet school partner, Zhang Jin, which was recently published in PNAS.
  • Professor Peter Barry announces a new vaccine strategy to prevent cytomegalovirus infection which causes birth defects. Learn more from here.
  • Associate Professor Hooman H. Rashidi has been appointed to a two-year term on the Digital Education subcommittee for the American Society of Hematology's Education Committee.
  • Pathology Department Chair Lydia Howell was a guest speaker at the Cleveland Clinic on November 5-6. She spoke to the Women's Professional Organization on her NIH-funded work on career flexibility, and gave grand rounds on quality programs in cytopathology as an approach to surviving disruption.
  • The Association of American Medical Colleges annual meeting featured a poster "Gender Differences in Barriers to Career Flexibility: Showing the Path Reveals the Obstacles" presented by Department chair Lydia Howell, and co-authors Laurel Beckett, Judith Li, and Amparo Villablanca on November 8 in Chicago.
  • On November 17, Assistant Professor Eric Huang led a workshop on "Updated ASCCP Consensus Management Guidelines for Women with Abnormal Cervical Cancer Screening Tests" at the American Society of Cytopathology's annual scientific meeting in Dallas.
  • Academic Chief Administrative Officer, Catherine Diaz-Khansefid, was inducted as the Founding President of the Northern California Chapter of the international annual meeting of the Society of Research Administrators in San Diego, October 18-22.
  • 2014 Edmondson intern Maria Sanchez and mentor, Assistant Professor James Chan, presented a poster "Analysis of HER2 and CD44 turnover rates in two breast cancer cell lines using fluorescence microscopy" at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, in Los Angeles, October 16-18.
  • The week of October 13, Nigerian hematologists, Mabel Ekanem from Univ. of Uyo and Iquo Iganga from Univ. of Calabar, visited our blood bank and blood provider BloodSource to learn more about transfusions practices, including blood collection.
  • Associate Professor Mingyi Chen has received a support grant from Bayer Pharma AG's Grants4Targets program for his project "Lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor-1 (LOX-1) is a potential therapeutic target of of sickle cell vasculopathy."
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan has received a $2.7M U01 award from the National Cancer Institute for her project "The Role of Probiotic Bifidobacteria and Bile Acid Metabolism in Carcinogenesis." Wan's co-principle investigators are David Mills from the Dept. of Viticulture and Enology, and Carolyn Slupsky from the Dept. of Food Science and Technology.
  • Transfusion Medicine Fellow Sarah Barnhard will represent our department at the annual AABB meeting to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania October 23-29, 2014. Barnhard will present a poster, titled “Using the Tethered Meta Registry to improve the UC Davis Medical Center Patient Blood Management System.” The research and resulting poster is a collaborative effort with Hematopathology fellow Rebecca Sonu, Professor Carol Marshall, Vice Chair for Informatics Michael Hogarth, Sharon L. Meyers, Ph.D., Clinical Registries Supervisor with UC Davis Health Education Management, former UC Davis Assistant Professor Jeremy Parsons, and Larry Errecart, an analyst with UC Davis Health Information Technology.
  • Professor Richard Levenson, Vice-Chair for Strategic Technologies, will be an active participant at the College of American Pathology (CAP) annual meeting to be held in Chicago, Illinois September 7-11. On Tuesday, September 9, Levenson will teach “Microscopy without the Microscope, New Ways to Guide Clinical Decision-Making,” and on Wednesday, September 10, he will join Jill Kaufman of CAP in presenting the roundtable course, "In-patient and Near-patient Real-time Microscopy: Good News or Bad News?" He also plans to present his poster, titled “Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging (MIBI) of Human Breast Tumors."
  • Also in attendance at CAP will be fourth-year resident Elham Vali Khojeini, who will present her poster, “Stromal Rich Variant of Hyaline-Vascular Castleman Disease, a Case Report of an Unusual Tumor with Review of the Literature,” co-authored with her mentor, Associate Professor Mingyi Chen. Elham has been accepted as the 2015-2016 UC Davis Hematopathology Fellow.
  • Assistant Professor James Chan has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project, "Multifocal Laser Tweezers Raman Spectroscopy for Parallel Spectral Analysis of Biological Cells".
  • Catherine Diaz-Khansefid, our Academic Chief Administrative Officer is the President-Elect of the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Research Administrators.
  • Assistant Professor Kristin Olson has been appointed to a three-year term on our school's Committee for Educational Policy. Olson is the Instructor of Record for our pathology courses for first and second year medical students.
  • On July 30, Assistant Professor Nam Tran and 2013 Edmondson Intern Amanda Steele presented three posters at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry's annual meeting in Chicago. All three posters involve point of care glucose testing in critically ill patients and the effects of sample interference on device accuracy, and included testing in 10 different glucose meters.
  • Distinguished Professor Ishwarlial (Kenny) Jialal is the author of two chapters in the newly released 2015 Tietz Fundamentals of Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Diagnostics, 7th Ed.
  • Our department has been named a Molecular Center of Excellence by Roche Diagnostics, a recognition shared by just 35 other molecular labs nationwide who collaborate and capitalize on scientific knowledge in molecular testing and accelerate the advancement of new test methods and technology.
  • The pathology team of biomedical engineering undergrads led by our very own Assistant Professor Nam Tran won the 2014 Best Senior Design Award for designing a unique tissue sampler for use during digital image-guided autopsies. The students' experience is featured in this YouTube video.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green is a featured speaker at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Working Group on the Microbiome in Cardiovascular, Pulmonary and Hematologic Health and Diseases". His lectures include “Hematologically Relevant Micronutrient Status: Does the Microbiome Affect Vitamin Bioavailability? Studies Using Biosynthetically Labeled Cobalamin” on June 25, and “Is Vitamin B6 Status Important in Sickle Cell Disease? Lessons Learned from a Supplementation Trial” on June 26.
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran has been accepted into the Emergency Medicine K12 program for his project "Development of a Translational Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic (PK) Model for Antibiotic Therapy in Critically Ill Children". This 2-year program is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
  • Forensic pathologist, neuropathologist and volunteer clinical faculty member Bennet Omalu is the subject of an upcoming Hollywood film starring Will Smith which recounts Omalu's discovery of the unique brain changes associated with football concussions and the opposition he faced from the NFL. Read more about this news from here.
  • On June 7, chair Lydia Howell spoke on "HPV: Lab and Clinical Perspective; Implications for Screening and Interpretation" at UC Davis' annual Women's Health Conference in Sonoma, CA.
  • New graduate Andrew Meyers is the recipient of the 2014 Robert E. Stowell Award for Excellence in Pathology. Established by the department's founding chair, Robert E. Stowell, this award recognizes exceptional performance in the pathology course and pathology electives.
  • Richard Levenson, Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, is speaking on "In-Situ Cancer Vaccine with Laser Potentiaion: From Mouse to Human to Cat" at the World Pharma Congress, May 21-23, Boston, MA.
  • Director of Apheresis Leonor Fernanco is co-editor of a Spanish language special review issue from the American Society of Apheresis. Produced only once every 3 years, the special issue is evidenced-based and serves as the key resource for information on medical conditions treated by therapeutic apheresis.
  • Assistant Professor Mingyi Chen is serving as a mentor to 2nd year medical student Lucy Ogbu-Nwobodo who has received a UC Davis Medical Student Research Fellowship Stipend Award to participate in Chen's project "Role of LOX-1 in the pathogenesis of sickle cell disease cerebral vasculopathy."
  • Incoming Chief Resident Christina DiLoreto gave an oral presentation entitled "Hemoglobin C from a Donor Following Red Cell Exchange" at the annual meeting of the California Blood Bank Society, April 30-May 1 in Lake Tahoe. Her mentor was Leonor Fernando.
  • Chair Lydia Howell, M.D. shared the importance of Medical Laboratory Professionals Week on New10@9.
  • Richard Levenson, M.D. was a panelist at RSNA/ASCP Workshop on Radiology and Pathology Diagnostics: Is it Time to Integrate? "High Dimensional Fused-Informatics: Is there an Opportunity to Re-define the Diagnostic Process?" in Oakbrook, IL April 21-22.
  • Match Day brings four outstanding new residents to our department: Nima Amini (M.P.H.A., California State University Northridge; M.D., Tehran University of Medical Sciences); Nicholas Coley (M.D.-Ph.D., University of Washington; B.S., UC Davis); Ruijin Su (M.D. Guangzhou Medical University; Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong); Pritesh Chaudhari (M.D., Ross University; B.S., Washington University).
  • Two faculty members have received new grants exploring highly multiplexed ion beam imaging. Richard Levenson is PI on a R21 award for "Highly multiplexed ion-beam tissue RNA in situ imaging with sub-micron resolution" and Sandy Borowsky is PI on a Dept. of Defense grant for "Next-Generation Molecular Histology Using Highly Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging (MIBI) of Breast Cancer Tissue Specimens for Enhanced Clinical Guidance."
  • Kristin Olson and Ishwarlial Jialal were participants in the annual Leadership Conference for the American Society of Clinical Pathology in Miami. Olson attended as a member of the editorial board for the ASCP Case Study program. Jialal participated as section editor for the Clinical Chemistry section of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology.
  • Assistant Professor, Nam Tran was honored with the Dean's Award for Excellence in Education for his creative leadership in developing a unique and successful multi-disciplinary undergraduate course “Clinical Applications for Biomedical Device Design".
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green delivered the 15th Annual Kouichi R. Tanaka, M.D. Hematology Lecture on "Blood and Guts: Some Connections Between Disorders of the Gastrointestinal Tract and the Hematopoietic System" in the Department of Medicine at UCLA-Harbor Medical Center in Los Angeles.
  • The annual UC Davis Health System Quality Forum featured posters by residents Sarah Barnhard and Rebecca Sonu, "Using the UC-Davis Tethered Meta Registry to Improve the UC Davis Medical Center Patient Blood Management System" and "Evaluation of Oral Calcium Carbonate Prophylaxis for Therapeutic Plasma Exchange during a Calcium Gluconate Shortage".
  • Assistant Professor, Chris Polage led the kick-off of a major quality improvement initiative to reduce hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infections, a serious nationwide complication. This project is funded by a $2.4 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
  • Two major new project contracts have been awarded to Professor and Vice Chair of Informations Services Michael Hogarth and his team. A $1.7 million five-year contract for their project "Developing Capacity In Data Analytics Necessary To Work With Big Data Held In Health Care Systems" will assist MediCal in managing health care provisioning, fraud detection, and other services. The State of Maryland is providing $186,000 for the creation of a state-wide electronic death registry, modelled after the system that Hogarth's group developed and operates for the State of California.
  • Professor Alaa Afify presented three posters at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology in San Diego. Topics included proteomic analysis of effusions, expression of CD44v6 in colon, and magnetic bead immunoisolation of pancreatic epithelial cells for downstream molecular applications.
  • Residents Sarah Barnhard, Christina Di Loreto, Mahan Matin, Rebecca Sonu and Elham Vali Khojeini had poster presentations at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in San Diego. Topics included on-site evaluation of renal biopsies, core biopsy diagnosis of intraductal papilloma, CD4/CD8 T-cell ratios by flow cytometry in bronchioloalveolar lavage.
  • Assistant Professor Mingyi Chen gave a platform presentation on “Detection of an Epigenetic Regulator/Histone Methyltransferase and Putative Oncoprotein MMSET/NSD2 Expression in High Grade B-Cell Lymphomas” at US and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s annual meeting in San Diego.
  • On February 21, resident Christina DiLoreto gave an oral presentation on SCUBA diving fatalities at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Seattle.
  • Assistant professor Konstantinos Zarbalis has received an Explorer Award from the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation to support his research examining autophagy dysregulation as an underlying mechanism in autism.

2013

  • Assistant Professor, James Chan, was awarded a 3-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for $371,381 for his project "Nonlinear Optical Based Flow Cytometry for Purifying Stem Cell Derived Cardiomyocytes". This year, Chan also received a $200,000 NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Fundamental Research Program grant for "Dynamic Imaging of Cancer Stem Cell Proliferation Using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Labels", and a 3-year $432,000 contract from a major pharmaceutical company to study the role of Raman spectroscopy in pharmacokinetics.
  • Our faculty are key leaders in new awards funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for the development of a large national network for clinical outcomes research: Vice Chair of Information Services Mike Hogarth is the UC Davis site principle investigator for 'Patient-centered Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research' which includes all five UC medical centers, in addition to other universities, the RAND Corporation, and the Veterans Administration. Our Cardiff Professor for Research Informatics, Nick Anderson, is co-principle investigator for Community-Engaged Network for All, which includes collaborators at UCSF, Genetic Alliance, Private Access and ten disease advocacy organizations.
  • Vice Chair of Research Yvonne Wan delivered a plenary lecture on "Bile Acid-Induced Death and Survival of Liver and Colon Cells" at the 7th Guangdon and Hong Kong Liver Annual Symposium, November 23-25.
  • Bennet Omalu, an associate clinical professor of pathology at UC Davis who discovered the neurological disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in retired professional football players, was named among the top 20 forensic pathology professors online by Forensics Colleges. He is also chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County.
  • The American Society of Cytopathology's annual meeting November 8-12 featured a platform presentation by chair Lydia Howell on computerized decision support to assist appropriate Pap test ordering, a poster on suspicious thyroid fine needle aspirations by resident Christina DiLoreto, fellow Meighan Tomic, and faculty Eric Huang, and a workshop on common challenges in veterinary and human cytopathology led by Lydia Howell, Meighan Tomic, and veterinary faculty member William Vernau.
  • Our department was honored at the Sacramento Community Cancer Coalition’s Annual Health Fair on October 19. Phlebotomist Carlton Matthews received a Community Service Award for his 5 years of service at this event, and members of the California State Assembly recognized our department with a proclamation for providing phlebotomy services and PSA screening for the past five years.
  • Assistant professor Izumi Maezawa received an NIH R01 grant for $1.56 million for her project studying a potential therapeutic target for reducing brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease, "The Role of KCa3.1 in Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer Disease."
  • On October 8, PBS Frontline documentary “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis” featured associate professor Bennett Omalu, discoverer of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a unique microscopic finding in the brains of pro football players.
  • Assistant Professor Eric Huang is the opening speaker at the Calfornia Association of Cytotechnology’s annual workshop in San Diego on September 21. Huang is speaking on “2012 Updated ASCCP Consensus Management Guidelines for Women with Abnormal Cervical Cancer Screening Tests”.
  • Michael Hogarth, our Vice Chair of Information Services, was honored as a member of the team receiving the Nicholas Davies Award which recognizes health care organizations who demonstrate the value of the electronic medical record in supporting patient care, improved patient outcomes, addressing challenges and describing solutions that can be replicated by others.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green spoke on “Vitamin B6 and vascular disease risk: homocysteine or inflammation” and chaired a session on Vitamin B6, tryptophan, and inflammation at the 9th Annual Conference on Homocysteine and One-Carbon Metabolism, September 8-10, at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
  • Assistant Professor Eric Huang has been appointed to the Cervical Expert Workgroup, a collaboration between the California Dept. of Health Services and the Institute of Public Health at San Diego State University. to improve quality of cervical cancers screening in state funded programs. He replaces Department Chair Lydia Howell who has served on this workgroup for the past 21 years.
  • Ishwarlal (Kenny) Jialal, our Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, was advanced to Distinguished Professor. This honor is reserved for the most highly accomplished faculty who have attained national and international recognition for the impact of their research, excellent teaching and highly meritorious service.
  • Assistant Professor Nam Tran and his multi-disciplinary team found that glucose monitoring systems with an auto-correct feature were more accurate for monitoring burn patients, an important finding improving quality of patient care.
  • On August 6th, Professor Michael Hogarth and his team were honored with a gold level Larry Sautter Award by the University of California for their leadership in developing a tethered meta registry consolidating 2.1 million patient records. This registry will provide a central data resource for research and service improvement projects.
  • Professor Regina Gandour-Edwards is serving as the Medical Director for the world-renown Jackson Laboratory-West.
  • Residency and forensic pathology fellowship alumnus Mark Fajardo has been appointed the Chief Medical Examiner-coroner for Los Angeles County.
  • A new inhibitor of C-reactive protein, developed by Ishwarlial Jialal, Stowell chair in experimental pathology, is a potential treatment for cardiovascular disease since it blunts the inflammatory process that causes this disease.
  • Assistant Professor Christopher Polage has received a grant for $2,478,275 for his project “Reduction of Clostridium difficile Transmission and Hospital-acquired Venous Thromboembolism” from the Gordon and Betty Irene Moore Foundation. Polage will be collaborating with Chief Nursing Officer, Carol Robinson.
  • Sixteen faculty members received academic advancements, effective July 1. Jimmy Chen and Imran Khan were promoted to Associate Professor. Merit advancements were awarded to Alaa Afify, Peter Barry, Dariusz Borys, James Chan, Denis Dwyre,Eric Huang, Hanne Jensen, Izumi Maezawa, Carol Marshall, Kristin Olson, Christopher Polage, Joo Song, Nam Tran, and Yanhong Zhang.
  • Associate Professor Imran Khan has been awarded one of 10 grants from Phase 5 of the Pakistan-US Science and Technology Cooperation Program for his project “Development and Commercialization of a Blood-based Tuberculosis Diagnostic Test”. This research award is sponsored by the US State Department and USAID, and will be conducted with collaborator Natasha Anwar of Forman Christian College in Pakistan.
  • Professor Raj Ramsamooj has been elected Vice Chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.
  • Professor Leonor Fernando, Director of Apheresis, was honored as a Fellow by the American College of Physicians in their 2013 Convocation in recognition of her service and contributions to the practice of medicine.
  • Vice Chair of Research, Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan, was presented with certificates of appreciation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institute of Health for her many years of public health service on several NIH study sections.
  • Yuqi He, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Vice Chair Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan, received the outstanding abstract award at the 95th Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting and Expo in San Francisco on June 15-18. He's award winning submission was titled, "Genomic Binding and Transcriptome Profiling Defines the Role of Retinoic Acid in Hepatic Lipid Homeostasis".
  • We welcome 10 outstanding Edmondson Summer Research Fellows for 2013: Alyssa Benjamin (UC Davis), Natalie Benning (Sac City), Mark Douglass (Santa Rosa Jr. College), Jerry Fang (Johns Hopkins), Nazera Fazli (Los Medanos Comm. College), David Nam (Amherst), Lous Schuetter (UC Davis), Amanda Steele (UC Davis). Ali Valdrighi (Pomona).
  • Under the mentorship of faculty members Ralph Green and Mingyi Chen, first-year medical student Amrita Krishnamurthy received the prestigious 2013 Hematology Opportunities for the Next-Generation of Research Scientists Award.
  • Under the mentorship of faculty members Ralph Green and Mingyi Chen, first-year medical student Amrita Krishnamurthy received the prestigious 2013 Hematology Opportunities for the Next-Generation of Research Scientists Award.
  • Undergraduate student Amanda Steele, a mentee of assistant professor Nam Tran, has received Honorable Mention in the competition for the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her project A Novel Quantitative Analysis Method for Predicting Acute Kidney Injury During Burn Resuscitation.”
  • Assistant Professor, Mingyi Chen along with Dean Claire Pomeroy recently had an article published in the prestigious Science journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) entitled, Murine natural killer cell licensing and regulation by T regulatory cells in viral responses. For a copy of the article, please visit here.
  • Professor Lee-Way Jin received a $250,000 award from the BrightFocus Foundation for his study "KCa3.1 Blockers for Alzheimer's Disease Therapy".
  • Our Transfusion Medicine fellowship, under the leadership of program director, Carol Marshall, received a full 5-year accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
  • Three of our faculty are featured in the Neuroscience Symposium on 04/22-04/24 co-sponsored by UC Davis Health and Academia Sinica. Taiwan's equivalent of the National Academy Science. Lee-Way Jin and Hawi-Jong Cheng are each chairing sessions, and Ralph Green is a speaker.
  • Asst. Professor Nam Tran and his point-of-care technology team will be presenting five abstracts at the American Burn Association's annual meeting, April 24-26, including a platform presentation by medical student, Erin Howell, recipient of a medical student research fellowhip.
  • Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, Richard Levenson, participated in the National Cancer Institutes' Provocative Questions panel on intravital imaging to identify compelling research questions that explore subjects that currently aren't studied. The best questions will be selected for a funding opportunity that will be open to the national research community.
  • Faculty members Kristin Olson and Ishwarlal Jialal are participating in the annual Leadership Forum for the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) on April 3-7. Olson is a member of the editorial board for the ASCP Case Report program, and Jialal is a member of the editorial board for the American Journal of Clinical Pathology.
  • A biosensor to quickly and cost-effectively identify pathogens causing urinary tract infections has been developed by Nam Tran and his team of biomedical engineering students who will participate in the National Undergraduate Global Health Technology Design Competition at Rice University on April 5, 2013.
  • Professor Peter Barry received a R01 grant for $2,807,934 from the National Institute of Health for his project "Prevention of Primary HCMV Infection by Vaccination Against HCMV-Encoded IL-10".
  • We welcome our first pathology assistant student, Susan Louie, who will spend a 14 week rotation at UC Davis Health as part of a collaborative relationship with Drexel University.
  • Chair Lydia Howell was a guest speaker at Loma Linda University’s Dept. of Pathology and Anatomy’s Alumni Reunion on February 28. Her presentations included “Generational and Gender Differences Toward Career Flexibility and Work-Life Balance” and “Surviving Disruption in Cytopathology: Creativity, Quality, and Core Service”.
  • Assistant professor Joo Song received a $50,000 fellowship award from the University of California’s Center for Health Quality and Innovation for his project "Expand the UC Davis Pathology Consortium to Southern California Medical Centers."
  • Assistant professor Mingyi Chen will speak on "Lectin-like Oxidized Receptor-1 in Atherosclerosis and Sickle Cell Disease Vasculopathy" at the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology's companion meeting at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 2-8 in Baltimore.
  • Eight posters from our department will be featured at the upcoming US and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 2-8 in Baltimore. Five are from our housestaff: Christina DiLoreto, Benjamin Durham, Nicole Pele, Meighan Tomic and Michael Van Ness. Special thanks to all our faculty involved as presenters, mentors, and collaborators: Afify, Bishop, Borowsky, Borys, Cardiff, Chen, Gandour-Edwards, Green, Huang, Zhang, Richard Levenson, vice chair of strategic technologies, has been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of OncoPathology.
  • Assistant Professor Mingyi Chen will speak on "Lectin-like Oxidized Receptor-1 in Atherosclerosis and Sickle Cell Disease Vasculopathy" at the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology's Companion Meeting at the US and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 2-8 in Baltimore. Eight posters from our department will be featured at the upcoming US and Canadian Academy of Pathology, March 2-8 in Baltimore. Five are from our housestaff: Christina DiLoreto, Benjamin Durham, Nicole Pele, Meighan Tomic and Michael Van Ness. Special thanks to all our faculty involved as presenters, mentors, and collaborators: Afify, Bishop, Borowsky, Borys, Cardiff, Chen, Gandour-Edwards, Green, Huang, Zhang. Richard Levenson, Vice Chair of Strategic Technologies, has been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of OncoPathology.
  • Assistant Professor, Christopher Polage, has been selected to serve as one of the 24 Associate Scientific Advisors for Science's sister journal, Science Translational Medicine.
  • Richard Levenson, our vice chair of strategic technologies, is prominently featured at the: Medicine Tri-Conference in February 11-15.He will be moderating a roundtable on tumor-stromal interactions, speaking on digital pathology, as well as moderating an additional roundtable.
  • Rhonda Becker MPA MT(ASCP), director of professional services and our former core lab manager, has been appointed to the Clinical Laboratory Technology Advisory Committee (CLTAC).
  • New research conducted by professor Ishwarlal Jialal found that fat stored in the buttock area secretes abnormal levels of proteins chemerin and omentin-1 that can lead to inflammation and insulin resistance in individuals with early metabolic syndrome.The article was posted online January 10 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and will appear in the March 2013 print edition.

2012

  • Erica Padilla has been appointed our new clinical chief administrative officer. Her administrative experience includes five years as the operations administrator at BloodSource with oversight of seven departments. She has a master's degree in business administration from California State University, Sacramento.
  • Assistant professor Mingyi Chen has received an intramural research grant from the Cancer Center for his project "Identification of microbial pathogens in the pathogensis of lymphoma by a novel microarray assay."
  • Assistant professor Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno has received a $30,000 MIND Institute pilot research award for her project entitled An alteration in dendritic and spine number and morphology in pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal cortex underlies cognitive deficiencies present in autism.
  • The pre-conference on "Scientific Basis of Spinal Cord Injury Therapy" at the 2012 Howard H. Steel Conference featured a presentation by assistant professor Veronica Martinez Cerdeno on stem cell biology on November 28 in Orlando, Florida.
  • Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs John Bishop presented a poster “Raising the Bar: Breast Cancer Biomarkers IHC4 Harmonization from University of California - Athena Pathology Collaboration at the of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s inaugural Quality Care Symposium in San Diego on November 30- December 1, 2012.
  • Professor Michael Hogarth was a panelist in the 2012 California Health Information Exchange Summit on Nov 1st in Sacramento which brought together California's healthcare policy leaders and health information technology experts to discuss the optimal use of information technology to support the improvement of both clinical care and public health. Hogarth discussed "The Role of Big Data in Improving Quality, Outcomes, and Cost".
  • Assistant professor Eric Huang presented his abstract titled "Quantitative MRI assessment of LV structural remodeling and fibrosis formation in canine models of chronic atrial fibrillation" at the American Heart Association meeting in Los Angeles November 3-7, 2012.
  • Distinguished professor Ralph Green is an invited participant in the American Society of Hematology's (ASH) “Fly In” Day on November 28 in Washington, DC. This special advocacy effort enables ASH members to lobby members of Congress for relief of the scheduled 8.2% cut to the National Institute of Health's budget which is anticipated to have dramatic consequences to medical research.
  • Vice Chair of Information Services Michael Hogarth is participating in the UC Davis Big Data Implementation Committee to develop a comprehensive blueprint for computational infrastructure and intellectual resources necessary for "big data" research and to meet the teaching needs of our campus.
  • A U.S. Patent recently was issued to associate professor Ramez Saroufeem, and a collaboration of fellow physicians and researchers in the Departments of Urology and Internal Medicine for an in vivo spectral micro-imaging esophageal device that will allow early detection of dysplastic changes in Barrett’s esophagus for subsequent targeted biopsy, diagnosis and early therapy.
  • Professor Ishwarlial Jialal will be a featured speaker at the upcoming American Society for Clinical Pathology meeting in Boston, MA October 31-November 2. Jialal's Nov. 1 presentation, titled, "Cardiovascular Disease Biomarkers: Focus on Lipoproteins and Inflammation," will be part of the "Update Cardiovascular Disease Biomarkers: A Systems Approach" session.
  • Our department will be featured in two posters at the American Society for Clinical Pathology meeting in Boston, MA October 31-November 2. Assistant professor Mingyi Chen, M.D., Ph.D., will be presenting a poster titled, "Characterization of Clonal Plasma Cells in Bone Marrow Biopsy Associated with Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Pilot Study." Meighan Tomic, M.D., cytopathology fellow and assistant professor Kristin Olson are presenting "A Medical Student Elective in Gastrointestinal Oncology Modeled after the Multidisciplinary Tumor Board."
  • Two of our faculty have been appointed section editors for Archives in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine: John Bishop is the section editor for digital pathology, and Richard Levenson is the editor of a new section on advanced imaging in pathology.
  • Faculty member Dariusz Borys is presenting a poster titled "Acceptance of Digital Tumor Board Presentations in Two Medical Institutions" at the Digital Pathology Association's Pathology Visions 2012 Conference in Baltimore, Oct. 28-30.
  • In November, the American Society of Cytopathology's annual scientific meeting in Las Vegas will feature six poster presented by housestaff Sarah Barnard, Mahan Matin, and Meighan Tomic, with faculty mentors Alaa Afify, John Bishop and Eric Huang. Topics include cytologic differentiation of squamous and adenocarcinomas, atypical diagnoses in thyroid, and urine cytology, telecytopathology, and virtual microscopy.
  • Welcome to our newest faculty member, neuropathologist Mirna Lechpammer, M.D., Ph.D., whose research focuses on developmental neuropathology and includes thematic work on brain injury in premature infants and the neuropathology of Fragile X and related disorders.
  • Distinguished professor emeritus Bob Cardiff received UC Davis Extension's Outstanding Service Award for his leadership in developing the Pathobiology of the Mouse online program. Other members of this award winning team included professor emeritus Clancy Miller and retired pathology specialist Robert J Munn, both of whom developed content for these award winning courses.
  • Clinical laboratory scientist Ka Pou (Emily) Iong has been selected as a Career Ambassador by the ASCP to raise awareness among pre-college students about careers in laboratory science. Emily is a recent graduate of our clinical lab science program.
  • Distinguished Professor Ralph Green will give the keynote lecture at the Second Asian Federation of Haematology Scientific Congress in Singapore on September 8. He will speak on “Anemias beyond B12 and Iron deficiency: The Buzz about other B's, "Elementary" and non-Elementary problems.”
  • Congratulations to newly promoted professor Jeff Gregg, M.D. and associate professor Ramez Saroufeem, M.D. We also congratulate the following faculty for successful merit advancements: Sandy Borowsky, M.D.; Mingyi Chen, M.D., Ph.D.; Regina Gandour-Edwards, M.D.; Michael Hogarth, M.D. Lydia Howell, M.D.; Krish Krishnan, Ph.D.; Tom Konia, M.D.; Richard Louie, Ph.D.; Paul Luciw, Ph.D.; Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno, Ph.D.; Raj Ramsamooj, M.D.; and Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu, Ph.D.
  • Third-year pathology resident Rebecca Sonu, M.D. was recently selected as a recipient of the 2012 Resident Representative Leadership Award presented by the American Society for Clinical Pathology. This competitive award will honor her at the 2nd Annual Michele D. Raible Lecture for Residents and provide financing for her conference registration, airfare and lodging for the ASCP Annual Meeting to be held in Boston, MA October 31-Nov. 2, 2012.
  • Our faculty are advancing diagnostic testing with two new industry contracts: Assistant Professor Chris Polage, M.D., is working with Siemens on MicroScan Antibiotic Qualification 15(AQ15) Gram-Positive External Design Validation Study. Assistant Adjunct Professor Richard Louie, Ph.D., is performing a clinical study sponsored by Roche Diagnostics, Inform II with Freedom II 7mm (ACCU-Chek Inform II).
  • Professor Lee-Way Jin, M.D., Ph.D. received an award from the International Rett Syndrome Foundation for his study "Preclinical studies of allopregnanolone, a positive GABAA receptor modulator."
  • Assistant professor Izumi Maezawa has received two new research awards to support her work in neuroglial pathology in Alzheimer's disease and Rett syndrome: a two year R21 for $400,000 from the National Institute of Health and a pilot award from the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center for $32,500.
  • Yvonne Wan, an award-winning scientist and mentor whose work focuses on the role of retinoids in liver cell disease and regeneration, joins the department as our new vice chair of research. Wan will also serve as scientific director of the UC Davis Health biorepositories.
  • A multi-institutional study of osteosarcomas led by assistant professor Dariusz Borys reveals that p16 expression can predict tumor response to chemotherapy. The study appears in the May issue of Human Pathology.
  • Results from a NIH-funded study conducted by chair Lydia Howell and colleagues demonstrates that flexible career policies are important to faculty satisfaction. Surprisingly, young men and older women are at high-risk for work-life conflict.
  • Two new assistant professors join our department this summer: Jeremy Parsons completed a transfusion medicine fellowship at the Univ. of New Mexico, and Anna Romanelli finished a fellowship in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Faculty members Sandy Borowsky and Josh Miller have received IDEA grants from the California Breast Cancer Research Program for two projects: "Maternal Folic Acid Intake, Mammary Development, and Cancer" and "Establishing Cell Lifetimes of Normal and At Risk Breast Tissue".
  • Three assistant professors have received Academic Senate Research Awards: James Chan is using multimodal second harmonic generation and fluorescence microscopy to study arrhythmias, Mingyi Chen is studying microbial signatures in lymphomagenesis, and Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno is investigating stem cell treatment for spinal cord injury.
  • Faculty member Alexander Borowsky has found that a genetic mutation in p53 may play an important role in the development of prostate cancer and in its early progression toward a more aggressive form of the disease. His study was published online in the journal Disease Models & Mechanisms.
  • Congratulations to clinical laboratory science students Alexander Ko and Ka Pao Iong who are recipients of the 2012 National Student Honor Award from the American Society for Clinical Pathology.
  • Zack Godwin, a junior research specialist working with Asst. Professor Nam Tran, will receive the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry's Distinguished Abstract Award for their study reporting the effects of hematocrit interference in critically ill burn patients. This award will be presented at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry annual meeting in Los Angeles in July.
  • Regina Gandour-Edwards, M.D. presented two posters at the ISBER Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC, May 15-18: “Development of a Unique Human Cancer Xenograft Model: Essential Role for the UC Davis Cancer”, and “Collecting Blood for Research in the Asian American Community: A Collaboration Between the UC Davis Cancer Center Biorepository and the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Training”.
  • On May 4, chair Lydia Howell is presenting a poster at the Association of American Medical College's Physician Workforce Research Conference in Washington DC titled "Work to be Done: A qualitative analysis of biomedical faculty attitudes about and perceptions of family-friendly workplace policies."
  • Faculty member Ishwarlal (Kenny) Jialal will receive the 2012 Garry Labbe Award from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry’s Nutrition Division at their annual symposium on July 17th. Jialal will provide an address titled "Nutritional modulation of the Metabolic Syndrome".
  • Faculty member Ishwarlial Jialal research has demonstrated that Toll-like sentinel proteins direct an increase in the inflammatory process causing metabolic syndrome, a precursor to diabetes and heart disease.
  • Faculty member Dariusz Borys will be presenting a poster at the US & Canadian Academy of Pathology in March, "Gene Deletion Underlies Loss of P16 Expression in Osteosarcoma Tumors with Poor Response to Neoadjuvant Therapy."
  • Nearly 200,000 people have visited the UC Davis POC Technologies Center YouTube website, and over 400 are subscribers. Australian Partners contributed two new lectures on POC testing in low-resource settings. Center Investigator, Richard Louie, and colleagues created a tutorial that highlights the critical need for protection for POC cardiac biomarker tests from environmental stresses during urban search and rescue. Please visit https://www.youtube.com/poctctr to learn how the effects of high temperature and humidity can affect these tests and others performed at the point of care during emergencies and disasters.
  • Our Point-of-Care Technologies Center, directed by faculty member Gerald Kost, will collaborate with RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute, to create innovative and reliable POC devices that will ensure accuracy in challenging disaster environments, such as extreme heat or humidity.
  • Faculty member Peter Barry received a $625,000 NIH grant to study how vaccination can reduce viral shedding of cytomegalovirus (CMV). Successful vaccination could have major public health implications, particularly for women and children since CMV infection during pregnancy can cause significant congenital abnormalities.
  • Our department is serving as a beta-test site for Roche's Ventana iScan HT whole slide imager. Anatomic pathology director John Bishop is examining images from over 400 pathology slides to evaluate image quality, ease of use, and problem points in operation.
  • Yvonne Wan will join our department this summer as Vice Chair of Research and Scientific Director of UC Davis Health Biorepositories. An award-winning scientist and mentor, Wan has $3 million in federal funding to support her research studying the role of retinoic acid in liver function and disease.
  • In collaboration with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, faculty members Ralph Green and Mingyi Chen received the Fitzpatrick Research Award to support a postdoctoral fellowship for their project "Comprehensive analysis of microbial signatures for lymphomagenesis using a novel Microbial Detection Array".
  • Resident Enko Kiprilov and faculty sponsor Mingyi Chen have received a mini-grant for their project “The Role of Primary Cilia in Senescence and Differentiation: the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Model” from the UC Davis Musculoskeletal and Aging Research and Education Group.
  • Welcome to new faculty member Richard Levenson, M.D., who joins the department as professor and vice chair of strategic technologies. Internationally known for his leadership and innovation, The Scientist magazine named Levenson’s optical dynamic contrast enhancement technique one of the top ten innovations in the life sciences for 2010. Previously, he was vice president of research at Cambridge Research Institute where he led development of their pathology, research and small animal imaging systems.
  • Third-year resident Kali Tu provides pathology services in remote villages in Kenya.
  • South Korean students from the clinical laboratory science (CLS) program at Jinju Health College are visiting our department with their professor, Byoung-Seon Yang, Ph.D. The Korean students are paired with our CLS students for two weeks, and participate in educational actitivies at our Specialty Testing Center.
  • Ishwarlial Jialal, Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, has been appointed to the International Advisory Committee for the Kuwait Institute of Medical Specialization. He will participate in planning and implementing training and education programs for hospitals under Kuwait’s Ministry of Health and for the Faculty of Medicine at Kuwait University.
  • Ted Wun, professor of Internal Medicine and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, has been appointed Associate Dean for Research in the School of Medicine.
  • A big success -- Pathology faculty were included in 5 of 6 funded projects from the collaborative research opportunity sponsored by the Depts. of Surgery, Internal Medicine, and Pathology! Chen, Jin, Martinez-Cerdeno, Tran, and Zarbalis will be pursuing projects related to anemia in bypass surgery, muscle morphology in polycystic ovary disease, stem cells in Parkinson's disease, point of care testing in post-burn resuscitation, and autophagy in osteoporosis. And for those participants not funded, we hope that this program enabled you to meet new collaborators that will be valuable for future projects!

2011

  • Professor emeritus Boris Ruebner has received an Appreciation Award from UC Davis' Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in recognition of his outstanding service to the University in providing a freshman seminar.
  • A President's Undergraduate Fellowship has been awarded to Karen Wong, a student in course Medical Pathology 199, for her project on corneal reshaping for ocular health. Professor emeritus Anthony Cheung is her mentor.
  • Robert E. Stowell, the founding chair our department, and an internationally renowned pathologist and educator, died on Nov. 20 of a cerebral vascular accident at his home in El Macero, Calif. He was 96.
  • Ishwarlal Jialal, chemical pathologist and Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, was named a "Best Doctor in Sacramento" in Sacramento Magazine's December issue.
  • Radhika Srinivasan, health informatics graduate student pursuing research with pathology faculty member Mike Hogarth, is presenting "Evaluation of a Natural Language Processing Platform in Concept Tagging of Surgical Pathology Reports for Information Retrieval" at the Association of Pathology Informatics 2011 meeting in Pittsburgh on Oct 6th.
  • Resident Enko Kiprilov will be presenting his work on regulation of pluripotency in human embryonic stem cells at the joint Livermore National Laboratory-UC Davis Cancer Center Retreat in Livermore, CA on October 17th, 2011.
  • Our housestaff have 11 posters at CAP ’11. Congratulations to Barnhard, Gorospe, Jess, Matin, Milstein, Sonu, and Tu, and to their faculty mentors.
  • Ishwarlial Jialal and his team have discovered biological indicators that help explain why some obese people develop chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and others do not. His paper is published on-line today in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
  • The US Army Medical Research and Material Command awarded almost $375,000 to faculty member Jeff Gregg for his project studying the breast cancer oncogene ZNF217's role as a marker of invasiveness.
  • We’re delighted to have three outstanding new faculty members join our department this month: Eric Huang, M.D., Ph.D. (cytopath and gyn path) from Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston; Kristen Olson, M.D. (GI path) from UCLA and Joo Song, M.D. (hemepath) from NIH.
  • Resident representatives to major pathology organizations from our department include Aram Millstein and Sarah Barnhard for the College of American Pathologists for 2011-12, and Rebecca Sonu who is serving a two year term for the American Society of Clinical Pathologists.
  • Our Edmondson Fellows have been diligently working with their mentors on a variety of exciting research projects, and next week is the grand finale -- their presentations! Everything from point-of care to neuroscience, infectious disease, biophotonics and more! Show your support for these young scholars by attending one or several of their presentations beginning 9 a.m. Monday, August 8, Cancer Center Auditorium.
  • Neuropathologist Lee-Way Jin has received a grant for over $340,000 from the National Institute of Aging for his project "The Microglial Kv1.3 Channel in Alzheimer's Disease".
  • Faculty member Joshua Miller has been chosen to participate in the UC Davis Health's Mid-Career Leadership Development Program. His project will focus on developing a biorepository for translational research through the use of remainder blood specimens.
  • Congratulations to faculty members Ralph Green and Stephen Barthold who have been honored by the University as Distinguished Professors in recognition of their exceptional and impactful career accomplishments in all academic missions.
  • A warm welcome to our new residents: Christina DiLoreto, Eric Kiprilov, Elham Vali Khomeini, Michael Van Ness. Also, welcome to our new fellows: Amaurdeep Aulakh (Transfusion), Heidi Jess (Cytology), Joyce Kovar (Surg Path), Diane Sanders (Hemepath).
  • Congratulations to faculty member Chris Polage and his wife Emily on the birth of their new daughter, Lauren Kate.
  • Pathology informatics director Mike Hogarth has been appointed as our school’s representative to UC Research Exchange (UC-ReX), an exciting new project which will integrate data across all of the UC Health Systems to better support research and translational medicine.
  • Congratulations to our newly promoted faculty: Hwai Jong Cheng, Denis Dwyre, LeeWay Jin, and Joshua Miller. Congratulations also to faculty receiving merit advancements: John Bishop, Dariusz Borys, Sridevi Devaraj, Gerald Kost, Christopher Polage and Konstantinos Zarbalis.
  • Rhonda Becker, currently the clinical laboratory manager and senior supervising clinical laboratory scientist for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, has been appointed Assistant Director of Professional Services, including radiology, pathology and radiation oncology. Her appointment is effective July 1.
  • Welcome to the 2011 Edmondson Summer Research Interns: Rahotep Alkebulan (Howard Univ.), Jenna Chen (UC Berkeley), Shefali Dujari, (UC Berkeley), Morgan Ingemanson (Pomona College), Jane Lee (UC San Diego), Vincent O'Brien (St. Mary's College of CA), Samantha Osborn (Univ. of Notre Dame), Van Tra, (Bowdoin College), Melody Zhou (Carleton College).
  • Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu, John Bishop and colleagues are recipients of a 2011 Partnership for Innovation Commercialization Plan Award for their Advanced Tissue Diagnostics project to allow pathology evaluation of fresh tissue in minutes.
  • Devaraj and Jialal identified a new treatment target for diabetic nepthropathy. Their newly published study is the first to show that blocking toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) pathway could slow or even prevent diabetic nephropathy.
  • The Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network, a joint program between the Department of Pathology, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and National Institute of Health (NIH), will be hosting an international forum at the UC Davis Health campus entitled "Clinically Driven Commercialization: Moving Technologies to the Point of Need" on June 24.
  • Young investigators are encouraged to submit abstracts reflecting original research work. Four abstracts will be selected for oral presentations (15 minutes each) and 50 for poster presentations. All abstracts will be available at the meeting for attendees to review. The objective of this special program component is to encourage the development of young investigators conducting studies in point-of-care testing research and device commercialization.
  • Margaret Lawless is the recipient of the 2011 Charles M. Blumenfeld, M.D. Endowed Scholarship, an endowment established in July 2007 by the grandchildren of Charles M. Blumenfeld. In honor of Charles M. Blumenfeld, the endowed scholarship is a gift to a third- or fourth-year medical student who expresses an interest in specializing in pathology. Margaret will be entering Pathology residency at University of Washington.
  • Helen Bai is the recipient of the 2011 Robert E. Stowell Award for Excellence in Pathology, an award in honor of the first chair of the Department of Medical Pathology, Robert E. Stowell. The recipient is chosen based on an exceptional performance in the Pathology course and during rotations through the Department of Pathology during their fourth-year electives. Helen will be entering the Otolaryngology residency at UC Davis.
  • Assistant Professor Mingyi Chen, M.D. has been awarded a UC Davis Health Vision Grant for his project “Role of Lectin-like Oxidized Low-density Lipoprotein Receptor-1 (LOX-1) in endothelial cell activation and the vasculopathy of sickle cell disease.” This award program for early career faculty funds innovative, interdisciplinary, transformative research.
  • Hematopathology director Denis Dwyre, M.D. and apheresis director Leonor Fernando, M.D. will become fellows of the American Colleges of Physicians (ACP), effective July 1, 2011. Election to ACP is an honor demonstrating peer recognition for personal integrity, superior competence in internal medicine, professional accomplishment, and demonstrated scholarship.
  • On April 6, informatics director Michael Hogarth, M.D. was a panelist discussing: "Building a Successful Health Information Exchange: Technology Strategies and Solutions" at The State of Health Care Conference Strategies for Success in 2011,the capitol’s premier health care event.
  • Ishwarlial Jialal, M.D., Ph.D, Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, delivered lectures in Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai, India. He was the keynote speaker on ""Diabetes is a Pro-inflammatory State" for the Indian Association of Pathology and Microbiology Endowment Lecture.
  • Match Day brings us two excellent new residents: Elham Vali Khojeini, a graduate of Islamic Azad University of Tehran Branch, and Enko Kiprilov who will receive his M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
  • Nam Tram was accepted to the Mentored Clinical Research Training Program and will continue his work in our Point of Care Technologies Center under the mentorship of faculty member Gerald Kost.
  • Sefton R. Wellings, second chair of our department and author of a landmark atlas in breast pathology, died peacefully at his home on March 8, at age 83.
  • On March 1, Assistant Professor Dariusz Borys gave a platform presentation at the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology 100th Annual Scientific Meeting, "Expression of p16 in osteosarcoma as predictive neo-adjuvant therapy factor".
  • Kendra Harris has been selected as the next education coordinator for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's Clinical Laboratory Scientist Training Program. Jiunn Huang, the department’s current education coordinator, soon will be retiring and will work with and mentor Harris. Read more about this news article.
  • Check out the article on volunteer faculty member, Bennet Omalu, chief medical examiner for San Joaquin County, who is featured in the UC Davis Health's Faculty Newsletter. (PDF)
  • Raj Ramsamooj, our transplant pathologist, is one of the team members receiving the Dean's 2010 Team Award for Excellence for his role in the extraordinary larynx transplant that restored voice, taste and smell to a local woman.
  • Professor Ishwarlal Jialal, Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, has been named an associate editor of the journal Atherosclerosis.
  • Assistant Professor Konstantinos Zarbalis, Ph.D. has received a R21 award from the National Institute of Health for his study "Wdfy3, a Novel Regulator of neuronal migration and connectivity." Zarbalis is a member of the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine at the Shriners Hospital of Northern California.
  • On January 19, Sridevi Devaraj, Ph.D., will be honored by the Northern California section of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry as the recipient of their Technology Award for her outstanding contributions to clinical chemistry through science and technology. Devaraj is internationally recognized for her research on the causes of vascular disease.

2010

  • Photography by Chief Administrative Officer Darrell O'Sullivan is available at auction to benefit UC Davis Children's Hospital.
  • Ishwarlal Jialal, Stowell Chair in Experimental Pathology, found blood levels of vitamin D are significantly reduced in patients in the Sacramento area with metabolic syndrome. These findings are unexpected when considering the climate and healthy lifestyles in this region.
  • Congratulations to our faculty and staff for a successful laboratory inspection and re-accreditation by the College of American Pathologists. Your hard-work and dedication are greatly appreciated.
  • Our new automated technology in the Pavilion laboratory was featured on KCRA-3.
  • Our department was well-represented at the American Society of Clinical Pathology's annual scientific meeting in San Francisco. Jialal and Devaraj led a workshop on cardiovascular markers. Posters were presented by Afify, Borys, Jess, and Konia.
  • Welcome to our newly appointed faculty members, Veronica Martinez-Cerdeno and Richard Louie. Martinez-Cerden is a member of the Center for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine at the Shriner's Hospital where her work focuses on the genetic and epigenetic regulation of neural stem cell differentiation . Louie is Associate Director of UC Davis-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Point-of-Care Technologies Center and is developing new devices for rapid multipathogen detection related to national disaster readiness.
  • Former Edmondson fellow in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, UC Davis graduate student Wilson To was invited to the White House for President Obama’s Science Fair. To was part of a team that won the Grand Prize in the U.S. finals of the Microsoft-sponsored Imagine Cup for a project using a cell-phone based system to look for early signs of damaged blood vessels in diabetes and other diseases. Mentors for this project included pathology faculty member Anthony Cheung.
  • Jeffrey Gregg, professor and director of gene expression research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, in collaboration with Cancer Center colleague Sheryl Krig, received a $900,000 IDEA Collaborative Option award from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to demonstrate how the gene ZNF217 is an important biomarker that can predict if a breast tumor will be aggressive.
  • Lydia Howell has been appointed chair of the Hematology and Pathology Devices Panel of the Food and Drug Administration Medical Devices Advisory Committee.
  • Ishwarlal (Kenny) Jialal has been included in the Best Doctors in America 2011-2012 database. Physicians are included in this database based on a peer-review survey of thousands of doctors.
  • Leonor Fernando, director of our apheresis service, is featured on the homepage for the Foundation for the Accreditatin of Cellular Therapy regarding her experience as an inspector for FACT for the past five years.
  • Congratulations to chief resident Heidi Jess who received a resident scholarship from the American Society of Cytopathology to attend their 58th annual meeting in Boston in November.
  • Faculty member Leonor Fernando and colleagues presented a poster on the effects of ABO mismatch on stem cell transplants at the American Association of Blood Banks annual scientific meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, October 9-12. Read more from here.
  • Lydia Pleotis Howell, an anatomic and clinical pathologist well known for her work to improve protocols for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of breast and cervical cancer, has been named chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine. She has served as acting chair since 2008.
  • Mike Hogarth, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, won an Advancing Innovation Award from the National Institutes of Health for his work as chief architect of an information-management infrastructure created within the caBIG framework. This technology is used by investigators involved in a multi-center trial which pairs five investigational cancer therapies with biological markers.
  • Izumi Maezawa received a two-year New Investigator Award from the Alzheimer's Association, the largest private funder of Alzheimer research. Selected from a fierce global competition, Maezawa will test a microglial potassium channel as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease.
  • The College of American Pathologists' annual meeting will feature posters from residents Thomasina Bailey, Jose Gorospe, Heidi Jess, Aram Milstein, and Nelson Velasco, and faculty members Dariusz Borys and John Bishop. Check out the abstracts here.
  • Special thanks to our staff and faculty for their successful move to the new $24.3 million clinical laboratory in the Surgical and Emergency Services Pavilion. The new laboratory was recently featured on Capital Public Radio. Listen to the segment here.
  • Lee-Way Jin and Gang-Yu Liu discover a unique mechanism by which amyloid protein damages the brain, a finding that could lead to new ways to screen drugs for Alzheimer's and similar diseases. Their findings are published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about this news article.
  • Congratulations to newly promoted professor Alaa Afify, and to the following faculty for successful merit advancements: Peter Barry, Alexander Borowsky, Robert Cardiff, HJ Cheng, Malathy Kapali, Thomas Konia, Carol Marshall, and Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu.
  • Mingyi Chen, M.D., Ph.D. has joined the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine as Assistant Professor. Chen recently completed hematopathology fellowship training at the City of Hope Medical Center where he received extensive training in lymphoma, bone marrow, and molecular diagnostic pathology.
  • Nine outstanding college students and four high school students are participating in the department's annual Edmondson Summer Program for mentored experiences in pathology research and laboratory medicine. We welcome college student fellows Payal Desai (UC San Diego), Anna MIchelle Dillier (UC Davis), William Dotterweich (University of Notre Dame), Alyssa Espenson (California Lutheran University), Margaret Lloyd (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Allison Manderfield (UC Davis), Ramandeep Minhas (UC Berkeley), Carla Plaza (Cerritos and El Camino Colleges), Avnit Virdi (UC Davis, Ohlone College). We also welcome high school interns Crystal Vazquez (Sacramento Charter High School), Ka Thao (Sacramento Charter High School), Sarah Johnson (Elk Grove Health Professions High School), Carlina Vaughan (Elk Grove Health Professions High School).
  • A warm welcome to our outstanding new residents and fellows: PGY1: Sarah Barnhardt, Mahan Matin, and Rebecca Sonu; PGY2 Kali Tu; Fellows: Shweta Das (Cytopathology), MIchelle McNamara (Hematopathology), Surgical pathology fellows Philip Starshak and Joyce Kovar (Surgical pathology), Brian Poirier (Transfusion Medicine).
  • Professor emeritus Boris Ruebner was honored by the Division of Gastroenterology through the creation of their new Ruebner-Rosenquist Award. Ramez Saroufeem, assistant professor of pathology, was the first recipient of this award which recognizes a non-gastroenterology faculty member who demonstrates outstanding dedication to the education of gastroenterology fellows.
  • Chris Polage has been accepted as a K12 Scholar in the Clinical Translational Science Center's Mentored Career Development Program which accelerates the career growth of talented and committed junior faculty members as independent multi-disciplinary clinical investigators.
  • The landmark online course "Pathobiology of the Genetically Engineered Mouse Part A" developed by pathology faculty member Robert Cardiff in partnership with the Center for Genomic Pathology, and Center for Comparative Medicine recently received the Outstanding Distance Learning Course of 2010 award from the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA), the nation’s primary organization for promoting excellence in and awareness of continuing higher education. Read more from here (PDF).
  • Assistant Professor Dariusz Borys is presenting "Application of Virtual Pathology with Radiology Correlation in Daily Orthopedic Pathology Practice" at the the annual Aperio San Francisco Digital Pathology Seminar on June 11, 2010.
  • Anthony Cheung’s graduate student in Comparative Pathology, Wilson To, won the recent Image Cup Award competition held in Washington D.C. (he is a Gates Foundation Awardee in Cheung's unit) and will be representing the U.S. in the upcoming international competition in Poland this summer. Congratulations Wilson!
  • Regina Gandour-Edwards has been elected chair of the Undergraduate Medical Educators Section (UMEDS) of the Association of Pathology Chairs. UMEDS provides a forum for information, ideas and programs that develop and enhance education in pathology and laboratory medicine.
  • Nam Tran has been selected to participate in "Professors for the Future", a year-long fellowship program in Graduate Studies designed to prepare leaders that can address the unique future challenges of graduate education, post-doctoral training and the academy. Tran is a key member of our Point of Care Technologies Center.
  • Congratulations to Paul Holland who was honored as a recipient of UC Davis Health's first annual Volunteer Clinical Faculty Awards. Holland was nominated by our residents for his outstanding educational contributions in blood banking and transfusion medicine.
  • UC Davis Health’s clinical laboratory now offers a test for respiratory viruses that its laboratory directors believe is more rapid, sensitive and comprehensive than any other test methods currently available in the Sacramento region.
  • Ralph Green's research and study on folic acid and B-12 that suggest a possible health risk for the elderly is featured on the front page of the health system's website.

2009

  • The department's annual holiday auction raised $3038 which will be donated to the Short Term Emergency Aid Committee (Davis), the Women's Civic Improvement Club of Sacramento, and the Kiwanis Family House on the UC Davis Medical Center campus.
  • A new funding opportunity for exploratory projects in new point-of-care influenza testing technologies for emergency-pandemic-disaster care is offered by the UC Davis-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Point of Care Technologies Center.
  • Amparo Villablanca and Lydia Howell have received a grant for $1.27 million over four years from the National Institute of Health for research on family-friendly policies for women with careers in medicine. This is one of 14 grants funded nationally to address the challenges of women in science.
  • The clinical laboratory's move to the new Surgery and Emergency Servicesw Pavilion, and the laboratory's new state-of-the-art automation line is featured in The Insider.
  • The College of American Pathologists' 2009 meeting included poster presentations by faculty members Dariusz Borys, John Bishop, Denis Dwyre, and Claudia Greco, and residents Thomasina Bailey, Phillip Starshak, Kamireddy (Jyostna) Reddy.
  • Medical students are invited to learn about residencies and careers in pathology at an Open House for the Pathology Student Interest Group on November 30, 2009 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at PATH 1002. Pizza and refreshments will be served. RSVP to: richard.cosens@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
  • The new UC-wide collaboration, Athena Breast Cancer Research Program, includes key leadership roles by faculty members Robert Cardiff as the lead pathologist, and Michael Hogarth and Jose Galvez in development of informatics infrastructure.
  • The Intersociety Council for Pathology Information has chosen the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine as a recipient of a new matching grant to enhance our medical student interest group in pathology. Nine academic pathology departments were funded nationally to encourage outstanding medical students to pursue a career in pathology.
  • The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's new transfusion medicine fellowship has received its first two-year accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, thanks to the hard work of fellowship director Carol Marshall, M.D. Applications for the fellowship program are currently being accepted.
  • On September 4, 2009, the UC Davis School of Medicine honored Ralph Green as he concluded 13 years of outstanding service as chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Green's many accomplishments as chair included doubling of the department's annual extramural research funding, new clinical fellowships, and leadership of a UC laboratory consortium to minimize costly send-out tests. The department welcomes Green back to the general faculty to conduct his research, teach and provide clinical service.
  • Regina Gandour-Edwards and Joshua Miller received pilot grant awards from UC Davis' Clinical Translational Science Center to conduct innovative research in biorepository development.
  • Ishwarlal Jialal, Professor and Robert Stowell Endowed Chair received a grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 from the NIH, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The project title is CRP, Diabetes, Atherothrombosis. This award is for $908,000 for two year period. Congratulations Jialal!
  • New grants have been awarded to the Point of Care Testing Center team. Nam Tran has received a 3 year award for $1.7 million from the American Burn Association to study rapid quantitative PCR-based detection of Staphylococcus aureus in burn sepsis patients. Gerald Kost and Richard Louie received a U54 supplemental award sourced from federal stimulus funds for rapid multi-pathogen detection and national disaster readiness.
  • Lee-Way Jin and faculty at UCSF and UCLA have received a 5-year award for $1.8 million from the UC Office of the President to establish a University of California Pediatric Neuropathology Consortium (UCPNC). Precious pediatric brain specimens will be collected for research use, with a special focus on neural stem cell research. The UC Davis site will specialize in neurodevelopmental disorders affecting cognition and intellect, such as fragile X syndrome, autism spectrum disorders, and Rett syndrome.
  • Rhonda Becker, a senior supervisory clinical laboratory scientist, has received the 2008-09 Vice Chancellor and Hospital CEO Award in recognition of her improvements to laboratory operations and leadership in planning for its transition to the Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion.
  • Faculty members Alexander Borowsky, Jeffrey Gregg, and Carol Marshall have been accepted to the UC Davis School of Medicine's Mid-Career Leadership Program, a year-long curriculum that provides training and development in core competencies necessary for effective department and/or section/division leadership.
  • Judith Lee is among the first individuals in the United States to receive certification as a point-of-care specialist from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry. Lee will be recognized at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry's annual meeting in July.
  • John Bishop, Director of Surgical Pathology and Immunohistochemistry, authored a new volume in Springer's Essentials in Cytopathology series, "Endometrial Cytology with Tissue Correlation" which highlights direct cytologic sampling as an effective method of diagnosing endometrial abnormalities.
  • A warm welcome to new residents Tatyana Berezenko, Jose Gorospe, Aram Millstein, Nelson Velasco; cytopathology fellow Yasi Saffari; hematopathology fellow Daniel Marko; and surgical pathology fellows Steven Carlson and Brian Poirier.
  • Congratulations to newly promoted professors Sridevi Devaraj, Michael Hogarth, and Raj Ramsamooj; and to faculty members Jimmy Chen, Denis Dwyre, William Ellis, Jose Galvez, Regina Gandour-Edwards, Jeffrey Gregg, Lydia Howell, Ishwarlal Jialal, Lee-Way Jin, Christopher Polage, and Ramez Saroufeem for successful merit advancements.
  • Izumi Maezawa, postdoctoral scientist in the lab of faculty member Lee-Way Jin, received the 2009 UC Davis Award of Excellence in Postdoctoral Research for her recent publication in the Journal of Neuroscience demonstrating a novel astrocyte-based mechanism for disease onset in Rett syndrome with implications for autism.
  • The UC Davis Blood Bank was honored with the 2009 Friends of Nursing Award for their cooperative and efficient work ethic that contributes towards positive patient care outcomes. This annual award from Patient Care Services celebrates teamwork. See the article in The Insider.
  • In the April issue of Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, resident Mary Meighan Smith Tomic and faculty mentor Anthony Cheung report that whole blood viscosity correlates with vasculopathy using computer-assisted intravital microscopy for real-time in vivo quantification of microvascular abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease.
  • Rena Kuramoto and fellow clinical lab scientist Jackie Csicsery were the key individuals in an investigation by the clinical virology laboratory that led to a national recall of a product, used in clinical laboratories across the United States, which could have resulted in false positive results for the influenza B virus in respiratory specimens.
  • Check out the UC Davis-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Point-of-Care Technologies Center on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/poctctr. This project is led by Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine faculty member Gerald Kost, M.D., Ph.D. and is funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
  • UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is ranked 42nd in NIH funding among recipient institutions in 2008, according to The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. The department has had a steady and significant rise since 2006 when it was ranked 61st.
  • Congratulations to department faculty member Ursula Esser, Ph.D. on her new appointment as Interim Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Support (IRS) Unit at the UC Davis Office of Research.
  • The California Association of Cytotechnology's 44th Annual Workshop/Seminar will be hosted by the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Medical Education Building on May 30, 2009. David Kaminsky, M.D., former President of the American Society of Cytopathology, will be a guest speaker, in addition to department faculty members Alaa Afify, M.D.; John Bishop, M.D.; Malathy Kapali, M.D.; and Cindy Yu, M.D.
  • Congratulations to Christopher Polage, M.D. and his wife, Emily, who had a baby girl named Sabrina Claire Polage!
  • Hanne Jensen and Lydia Howell were among the honorees at a reception celebrating the School of Medicine's founding women for those who started their careers at UC Davis between 1969 -1990. Read more about the news from here.
  • Paul Luciw, Ph.D. elected to the prestigious Association for Advancement of Science. Read more from here.

2008

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