The Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine is an integral part of the vibrant UCLA research enterprise and includes faculty members with a broad array of basic, translational, and clinical research interests.

RESEARCH & CLINICAL EXCELLENCE DAY

Our second annual Research and Clinical Excellence Day was held on Friday, May 26, 2023. The event highlighted the ongoing basic, translational and clinical research in our department including quality, lab stewardship and education research. The event included presentations and over 20 poster displays. Thank you to our speakers, Drs. Charisse Treece, Yazhen Zhu, Dinesh Rao, Fausto Rodriguez, Ting Zhang, Nicole Valenzuela, and our keynote speaker, Dr. Gay Crooks. 

The poster presentations were equally diverse. Thank you all who participated - over double from last year!

I’d also like to thank the Research Day Committee, Drs. Jonathan Said (Chair), Tom Lee, Neda Moatamed, Bogdan Pasaniuc, and Jasmine Zhou for their vision in creating a platform to showcase department research.

Save the Date! Our third annual Research and Clinical Excellence Day will be held on Friday, May 31, 2024. As you and your team present research in the upcoming year, please remember that we would love to have you present your work at our event.

RESEARCH AWARDS

I am proud to profile our new research awards as of July 1st. We congratulate the faculty principal investigators on their grant awards and look forward to their innovative findings and results. 

The publications, grants and collaborations by our faculty underscore that UCLA is a highly interactive and collaborative environment in which interdisciplinary research flourishes. Our faculty and students continue to conduct important and meaningful basic, translational and clinical research and I look forward to learning about their future discoveries. Departmental research has continued to thrive and grow over the past decade. Our faculty publish their findings in many of the top biomedical journals such as Cell, Nature, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Nature Immunology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To date for FY23, faculty researchers generated over $4.8 million in active extramural funding, including over $1.7 million from NIH. This is double the amount of new funding compared to the same time period for last year – congratulations to all and thank you for all the grants submitted!

GRADUATING STAFF & CLINICAL TRAINEES   

As the academic year comes to a close, I would like to spotlight our graduating trainees, including staff and clinical MD/PhD trainees. We thank them for their dedication and wish them the best in their future endeavors.

STAFF & OTHER TRAINEES

 

National Clinical Scholars Program & BST Fellow Dr. Kene Ojukwu mentored Drew/UCLA MS1, Christopher Gonzalez, for his first ever research poster presentation at the UCLA JCCC retreat.

It is with great pleasure we announce Jennifer Filipek has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 UCLA Santa Monica Board of Advisors Mentor Award! Jennifer has illustrated lifelong enthusiasm for learning & growth in the healthcare field.

Congratulations to UCLA Pathology's Dr. Valerie Arboleda on being selected for the John H. Walsh Young Investigator Research Prize for outstanding research accomplishments! Dr. Arboleda is receiving the award from Interim Dean, Dr. Steven Dubinett.

Congratulations to UCLA Pathology's Dr. Bogdan Pasaniuc on his publication featured in Nature "Polygenic scoring accuracy varies across the genetic ancestry continuum." UCLA Health Newsroom recently wrote an article detailing the study. 

Congratulations to Dr. Precious Fortes & her faculty mentors, Dr. Sam French, Dr. Hanlin Wang, and fellow mentor, Dr. Sarah Daley, for receiving 1st place for their presentation " A Tale of Two Tumors in the Pancreas: A Diagnostic Challenge of Clear Cell Tumors " at the Los Angeles Society of Pathologists (LASOP) 50th Annual Resident/Fellow Symposium. 

Congratulations to UCLA Pathology's Heidi Martinez on being appointed as the UCLA Staff Assembly's 2023-2024 President-Elect!

Congratulations to Dr. Yajing Gao, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Dr. Peter Tontonoz, and Dr. Julia Mack, for winning second place in the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center’s 2023 microscopy image and video contest! 

Congratulations to Dr. Dawn Ward and the UCLA Human Gene and Cell Therapy Facility on being awarded a $2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to increase the capacity of its gene and cell therapy manufacturing facility and workforce! The new funding will assist in building the infrastructure necessary to attract, train and retain qualified staff capable of manufacturing products for a wide range of cell and gene therapy trials. As the Medical Director of the UCLA Human Gene and Cell Facility, Dr. Ward and her team will create an outreach program to raise awareness of career opportunities in Good Manufacturing Practices facilities with a particular focus on reaching groups that are typically underrepresented in scientific careers.  

We’re delighted to announce that two of our residents, Precious Fortes and Rak Tyagi, have been selected to present their projects/talks at the UCLA Health Resident Informaticist Project Virtual Symposium 6/13/2023!

Their projects/talks are:

• Precious Fortes: “Optimizing Transfusion Reaction Handoffs and Documentation”
• Rak Tyagi: “24Hr Platelet Audit Evaluation Tool”

Thank you to our Transfusion Medicine faculty and especially Dr. Khalda Ibrahim, Lab Medicine/Clinical Informatics, for supporting them in these projects. We hope that some members of our Department will be able to attend the Symposium to support Precious and Rak.