Batoul Aoun, DO shares her journey from war refugee to Chief Resident

The Department of Pathology was well represented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) held on October 14-18, 2022. This year’s event was held at the Fairmont Dallas Hotel in Dallas, Texas with hundreds of people in attendance. The meeting provided an international forum for discussion of a broad range of issues pertaining to forensic pathology and death investigation. The event featured hundreds of platform and poster presentations from forensic pathologists, pathology trainees, pathology assistants, forensic anthropologists, toxicologists, and medical students. Several of our faculty and trainees were featured at this year's conference.

Inpatient and outpatient phlebotomists from Michigan Medicine Department of Pathology are highlighted in career snapshots  videos produced by The Pathologist Magazine. Click through to watch these videos or to get a link to open positions in phlebotomy at Michigan Medicine.

For many of us, the idea of having blood drawn can be an unnerving thought. The use of needles and the sight of blood itself is not something we look forward to. However, Michigan Medicine has made several measures over the years to help the experience of our patients when needing to draw blood; especially young children [...]

Walk through a 30-year career with Dr. Gabriel Nunez--highlighting his key discoveries, perspectives on work/life balance, and those he mentored.

Nebraska native, David Golden, shucks Scarlet and Cream for Maize and Blue as he moves up the ranks in Pathology.

A research team from the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology undertook a study to illustrate how careful assessment of cytologic and biomarker features may provide physicians with information on Metastatic Prostatic Cancer (MCP) patients’ prognosis and the best therapies to consider [...]

On September 25^th, Pathology faculty, staff, trainees and their families gathered at Wiard’s Orchard in Milan, Michigan for the annual Pathology Appreciation Fall Picnic. While the weather was overcast, it was a pleasant fall day in the lower 60’s – just right for a day of fun activities!

The Department of Pathology's Specimen Processing Team

We are pleased to share that the Board of Regents today (Oct. 20) approved the appointment of Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska, M.S., Ph.D., as associate dean for graduate and postdoctoral studies in the Medical School, effective Oct. 1, 2022. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Nikolovska-Coleska on her associate dean role.

This year’s Blood Battle against Ohio State is October 27 – November 23.  Consider donating during Blood Battle to be a part of the fight to save lives across the state and country...and to beat OSU! To make a donation appointment, visit bloodbattle.org and click "Donate" on the homepage [...]

A successful New Frontiers in Pathology Conference was held in person and via Zoom on September 29-October 1, 2022 at The Graduate Hotel in Ann Arbor. Complex case studies, breakout sessions and plenary lectures were complimented by times of collegial interactions, food, laughter and fun.  Mark your calendars now for next year's New Frontiers in Pathology on October 26-28, 2023!

Learn more about our DEI efforts headed by Dr. Angela Wu.

A glimpse into Karen Barron's role as the Allied Health Education Program manager and helping to create opportunities for young laboratory professionals.

The field of Pathology is changing quickly as technology advances, with deep learning and artificial intelligence expanding into diagnostic arenas.

A Perspective by Dr. Noah Brown

The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) Pathology Ambassadors (PAs) is a grassroots program composed of pathologists and pathology trainees who help facilitate student pathology interest groups and mentor medical students at their home institutions. This ambassador program has two major goals: (1) to help recruit innovative, passionate, and diverse medical students to the field of Pathology and (2) to enhance other specialties’ understanding of pathology and our services, in turn positively impacting patient care.

Each Fall at the annual ASCP conference, two PAs are honored with the Pathology Ambassador Award for their outstanding, creative, and impactful events and mentorship. In October 2021, I was humbled to receive this award as a UM hematopathology fellow. This year, both winners are University of Michigan pathology trainees, too – Drs. Julianne Szczepanski and Justin Kelley!

A Perspective with Jessica McAnulty, MCP Student

The American Society of Clinical Pathology (ASCP) recently announced that our very own Dr. Jeffrey Myers, Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs and Quality and Director of Michigan Medicine Laboratories was selected for the prestigious 2022 ASCP Mastership Award. This award recognizes distinguished members of the ASCP who have made significant contributions to the field of pathology and laboratory medicine and to the ASCP [...]

The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce a series of virtual open house events for our Residency Training Program.

The Department of Pathology is home to one of the nation's top Residency Training programs. While this is not a surprise to our residents, the quality of our program was once again reaffirmed by Doximity, which  ranked our program as #4 in the nation and #1 among public academic institutions. This is up from an overall ranking of #6 the prior year and maintains the top spot among publica academic institutions.  Doximity is the largest online professional network for physicians in the United States. 

The Celina Kleer lab at the University of Michigan Department of Pathology and Rogel Cancer Center has found a new mechanism that fuels metastasis in triple negative breast cancers. In their new study they show that EZH2, a master regulator of cell type identity, known to function through methylation of histones, has a new, unexpected function in aggressive breast cancers [...]

This summer, Michigan Medicine officially welcomed 23 new Fellows and Clinical Instructors into the Department of Pathology.

Drs. Laura Lamps, Maria Westerhoff, and Angela Wu become the three newest Assistant Chairs in the Department of Pathology with a focus on Wellness, Staff Development and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [...]

Where are they from and why did they choose the University of Michigan?

Patients with relapsed multiple myeloma are resistant to commonly used treatments. Researchers are one step closer to understanding the genetic reason why.

Learn more about Scott Marquette's recent visit to the Clinical Microbiology laboratory and about the Visual Inventory Management pilot, a new initiative that is intended to help lab staff better organize their tools, resources and assets within the lab setting [...]

The Research Scientist Track

Congratulations to Kristina Martin, Clinical Pathology Operations Director, who recently took home the award for the Scientific-Assembly Laboratory Administration award from the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS) [...]

Effective July 1, 2022, Dr. Sriram Venneti, Professor of Pathology, was appointed as Scientific Research Director and Dr. Carl Koschmann, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, was appointed as Clinical Research Director for the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center (CC-PBTC).

We congratulate this year's house officers, fellows, and clinical instructor graduates!

We recognize Dr. Jolanta Grembecka on being named the inaugural Richard and Susan Rogel Professor of Cancer Therapeutics. An induction ceremony will be held later this year. Please join us in congratulating her on this honor!

With over 80 participants from the Department, the event was a big success.

...and what do they do?

A landmark study into quantitative image analysis in ER, PgR, and HER2 in invasive breast carcinoma was recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology. Dr. Mustafa Yousif, Assistant Professor of Breast Pathology and Informatics, and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of 1,367 invasive breast carcinomas of all histopathology subtypes, for which ER, PgR, and HER2 were analyzed by manual scoring [...]

Review the conference and plan to attend next year's event!

What is skin cancer and how can you prevent it?

On Saturday, May 21, 2022, Michigan Medicine hosted its first-ever Youth Summit at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. The event, which included local middle schools from Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and surrounding communities, invited young students out to the Big House in order to come and experience a day in medicine. The Department of Pathology had a station set up on the concourse, where these students could come try out microscopy, learn about urinalysis and practice phlebotomy on a fake arm [...]

As part of the ongoing series of renovations of the clinical laboratories at University Hospital, the Blood Bank Laboratory — and its landmark front window — will relocate about 135 feet to the east on Sunday, June 5.   A wayfinding graphic can be found here.

The International Society of Gynecological Pathologists has posted a podcast featuring discussion with Dr. Stephanie Skala about the use of p53/CK17 immunohistochemistry in the diagnosis of differentiated vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia. The podcast highlights the recent publication by former trainees Drs. Emily McMullen-Tabry, Shula Schechter, and Grace Wang, former UM faculty Dr. Andrew P Sciallis, and current UM faculty Drs. Steven Hrycaj, May Chan, and Stephanie Skala [...]

The Department of Pathology is pleased to welcome Andrew Szczembara as our new Point of Care (POC) Manager. A 2010 UM graduate, Szczembara joined the department in March 2012 as an inpatient phlebotomist on the midnight shift. He later transitioned to Brighton Health Center as a Phlebotomist Specialist lead [...]

On May 11, the Department of Pathology recognized the Class of 2022 Medical Laboratory Science (MLS) interns, who successfully completed the program. A graduation ceremony was held at the Superior Conference room, hosted by Allied Education Health Program Manager Karen Barron, MT (ASCP). The event featured remarks from Drs. Jeffrey Myers, Kathleen Cho, and Chair Dr. Charles Parkos. Graduates received their certificates of completion as they prepared to move into the next phase of their careers [...]

The Department of Pathology is set to participate in the Michigan Medicine Youth Summit on Saturday, May 21, 2022 at the Big House in Ann Arbor [...]

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare continues to expand. In a recent issue of BMC Cancer, Dr. Vipulkumar Dadhania (first author) and colleagues published a result of their study Leveraging artificial intelligence to predict ERG gene fusion status in prostate cancer. The expert team from the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology developed a deep-learning-based model to predict ERG genomic rearrangements in prostatic adenocarcinomas using only H&E-stained digital slides [...]

This year's Medical Laboratory Professionals Week celebration at the Department of Pathology, which ran from April 24-30, 2022, was a big success! Let's take a moment to recap some of the top moments...

We would be lost without you!

Congratulations to Dr. Kristina Davis, who was just elected Co-Chair of the Transplant Diagnostics Community of Practice (TxDxCOP) for the American Society of Transplantation (AST). Davis will assume her position as Co-Chair at the Amertican Transplant Congress meeting in Boston this June. She is replacing Dr. Evan Farkash, who will serve as Chair of this committee [...]

Drs. Liron Pantanowitz, Jeffrey Myers, Priya Kunju, as well as David and Elle Chapel were featured in the April 2022 edition of CAP Today Magazine, a medical science publication by the College of American Pathologists. The article focuses on the development of the AP hospitalist role at Michigan Medicine [...]

Dr. Matt Cusick describes the role of the HLA Laboratory in Organ and Bone Marrow Transplantation.

Christine Baker provides an update on Phase 2.3 of the Pathology Renovation and Relocation Program (PRR), which focuses on the progress of the Blood Bank at the University Hospital [...]