Fostering Education is a cornerstone of our Department mission. We are pleased to celebrate Trainee achievements and academic success! I would like to highlight some of the accomplishments of our Residents this past quarter.

Congratulations to those Residents who have presented posters or given oral presentations at national meetings!

Poster Presentations

 

The American Society of Dermatopathology 2023 Annual Meeting

 

• Dr. Cullen Lilley (PGY1)
  • American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) 2023 Annual Meeting
    • Assessing the Impact of Race, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity on USMLE Style Questions: Preliminary Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial
    • The Informative & Virtuous Role of Autopsy Observation Experiences in Medical Student Education

  • College of American Pathologists (CAP) Annual Meeting 2023
    • Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma with Metastasis to the Parotid: A Single-Center Retrospective Histologic Observational Study

 

The American Society of Dermatopathology 2023 Annual Meeting

Dr. Precious Fortes (PGY4) (also pictured left, mentor Dr. Peggy Sullivan)

International Federation of Placenta Association Meeting 2023

 

•  Dr. Precious Fortes (PGY4)
  • College of American Pathologists (CAP) Annual Meeting 2023
    • Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma with Follicular Lymphoma Grade 3B of the Ovary Mimicking a Solid Ovarian Neoplasm

  • American Society of Cytopathology Meeting 2023
    • Cervical Cancer: A Contemporary Look at an Old Tale

 

American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) 2023 Annual Meeting

 

• Dr. Joshua Pierce (PGY3)
  • Society for Pediatric Pathology 2023 Fall Meeting
    • Pediatric Angiosarcoma Masquerading as a Lymphatic Malformation in an Autopsy Case: A Rare Case Providing Insight Into Possible Etiologies for Disease Natural History

Dr. Alexandra Wellman (PGY3) 

 

American Medical Association Interim Meeting 2023  

 

Dr. Weibo Yu (PGY2)  

 

Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) 2023

Annual Meeting

 

 

Congratulations to those Residents who have had recent publications:

Publications

•  Dr. Cullen Lilley (PGY1)
  • Academic Pathology – Perspectives from Two Recent Medical School Graduates on Exposure to Pathology during Undergraduate Medical Education: A Narrative Inquiry
  • Phenotypic Clues that Predict Underlying Cytogenetic/Genetic Abnormalities in Myeloid Malignancies: A Contemporary Review

• Dr. Joshua Pierce (PGY3)
  • Nature – Integrated Genomic Analysis Reveals Aberrations in WNT Signaling in Germ Cell Tumors of Childhood and Adolescence

Fellowships

I also wish to congratulate our Residents who have recently accepted fellowship offers:

• Dr. Erica Fermon – Transfusion Medicine – Cedars Sinai 
• Dr. Alex Oliveira-Kowaleski – Cytopathology – UCLA
• Dr. Joshua Pierce – Dermatopathology – UCLA
• Dr. Amanda Zand – Gastrointestinal/Liver Pathology – UCLA

Congratulations to all on your achievements this past quarter!

Non-ACGME Fellowship Recruitment Update

For the second year, the UCLA Department of Pathology participated in the Association of Pathology Chairs (APC) Unified Approach to fellowship recruiting. The Unified Approach was designed by the APC to help standardize non-ACGME fellowship recruitment timelines in order to give residents more time to choose a subspecialty and interview at multiple programs before being asked to commit to one. The programs participating in the Unified Approach agree to adhere to a common timeline for interviewing and to make offers for their fellowship positions on a specific match day and time. Once the offers go out, the residents have 24 hours to accept the offer before the program can offer the position to another applicant.

This year UCLA offered three positions (2 for General Surgical Pathology and 1 for Women’s Health) for the 2025-26 academic year through the Unified Approach, and we are pleased to say that we were one of the few programs nationally to fill all our listed positions on the first round! The other subspecialty non-ACGME surgical pathology fellowships are not participating in the Unified Approach this year, so we are in the midst of helping the subspecialty division chiefs recruit for those fellows.

UCLA Pathology attended the Lung Cancer Screening Awareness event in November! From left to right: Drs. John Zuckerman, Nick Stanzione, Teresa Kim, and Precious Fortes.

Congratulations to Dr. Peter Tontonoz & collaborators on their article published in Science "Aster-dependent nonvesicular transport facilitates dietary cholesterol uptake." 

Dr. Harry Pickering, Dr. Nicole Valenzuela, Dr. Rebecca Sosa, Dr. Gregory Fishbein, Dr. Elaine Reed, and collaborators on their article featured in the American Journal of Transplantation "Human leukocyte antigen class I antibody-activated endothelium promotes CD206+ M2 macrophage polarization and MMP9 secretion through TLR4 signaling and P-selectin in a model of antibody-mediated rejection and allograft vasculopathy."

Congratulations to Dr. Rebecca Sosa, Dr. Bita Naini, Dr. Harry Pickering, Dr. David Gjertson, Dr. Elaine Reed, and collaborators on their publication "Immune Features of Disparate Liver Transplant Outcomes in Female Hispanics With Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis" as featured in Transplantation Direct.

Congratulations to our September 2023 Good Catch Winner, Kendra Tapia! Thank you for your dedication to patient care & continued excellence!

Description of Event: Surgical pathology received two specimen containers. One container was labeled with a beaker label that was partially cut off and only the MRN was visible. The MRN was "X" and the specimen was labeled as liver. The second container was labeled for patient "Y" and was identified as heart tissue. The tissue in both containers appeared to be the same so surgical pathology contacted the RR Cath Lab to confirm labeling. RR Cath Lab reported that both containers were for patient "Y" and that their printer printed both labels and they were accidentally placed on the containers. The labeling error was able to be corrected before the specimen was processed.

We are pleased to announce that the UCLA Health School of Cytology has been awarded continuing accreditation from the Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) with a full seven year accreditation!

The School of Cytology first accepted students in 1991. Program graduates serve across the US and internationally in a variety of settings, including as staff in the UCLA Health Cytology section.

We would like to thank UCLA Health administration, the UCLA Health Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the School of Cytology’s medical director, Dr. Jianyu Rao, faculty, staff, and stakeholders for their continuing support of the School of Cytology and for their assistance during the renewal process. Pictured below left to right: Mary Levin, SCT (ASCP), Cytology Clinical Lab and Pathology Fine Needle Aspiration Clinic Manager and Po Chu Fung, MBA, SCT(ASCP), School of Cytology Education Coordinator.

Cytology is pleased to announce the appointment of Yong Ying, CT (ASCP) as the new Cytology Lab Supervisor as of October 15, 2023. We are very excited to have Yong in this new position and look forward to working with him in his new role.

Yong received his Cytotechnology training in the UCLA School of Cytotechnology and joined the UCLA Cytology section in 1998.  Prior to training at UCLA, Yong was an assistant professor and medical doctor in the Second Military Hospital in Shanghai, China.

UCLA Pathology was pleased to host the 2023 PLUGS Regional Summit at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center! PLUGS, based out of Seattle Children’s Hospital, is a national laboratory stewardship collaborative with a mission to improve laboratory test access, ordering, retrieval, interpretation and reimbursement. UCLA is a PLUGS institutional member, and our Laboratory Stewardship Task Force has used their resources, policies, and templates in our own stewardship work. Thank you to Dr. Allison Chambliss for bringing the Summit to UCLA!

At the 2023 AMP Annual Meeting, Microbiology Fellow, Dr. JR Caldera, and Dr. Shaun Yang presented their poster.

Congratulations to Dr. Kene Ojukwu on receiving first place in the DOM Research Day Poster competition! The objective of the project "Assessing the Confidence of the Anti-Racist Advocate in our Academic Trainee" was to describe the process for developing two measured tools to measure confidence (self-efficacy) of the anti-racist advocate in an academic setting.