Dr. Amm received her BS in Biological Sciences from Saint Mary’s College and Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from UAB with a focus on cancer biology and novel therapeutics. Dr. Amm completed the Dental Academic Research Training (DART) program as a post-doctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Mary MacDougall and was a Mentored Experiences in Research, Instruction, and Teaching (MERIT) program Scholar-at-Large, which provided teaching experiences at a minority-partner institution. During h...
Dr. Antony is Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Antony's medical training began at Christian Medical College in Ludhiana, India. Following medical school, Dr. Antony progressed to an internship and residency at New York's Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. Following her Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship training in the University of Colorado's School of Medicine, Dr. Antony worked in Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Colorado Health S...
Rebecca Arend, MD is Assistant Professor and an Associate Scientist at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Experimental Therapeutics Program. She completed her undergraduate degree and her residency at Columbia Presbyterian in New York, NY and completed her fellowship at UAB. Prior to fellowship, she did research in hormonal and molecular pathways associated with uterine carcinosarcoma. During her fellowship in Gyn Oncology at UAB, she received an AAOGF/ABOG Young Investigator Fellowship grant t...
Dr. Bae leads the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Facility at UAB. He leads the biostatistics core of the Cervical Cancer Specialized Programs of Research Excellence with Johns Hopkins University and the Morehouse School of Medicine/Tuskegee University/UAB CCC Partnership (U54CA118948) and serves as senior biostatistician on numerous projects including Rxr Rexinoids for Cancer Chemoprevention (P01CA210946) and UAB Research Center of Excellence in Arseni...
Dr. Beierle received her undergraduate degree and medical degree from the University of North Dakota, graduating in 1989. She completed a general surgery internship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and subsequently completed her surgical residency at the University of Florida in 1996. She completed her pediatric surgery fellowship training in Philadelphia at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in 1998. Dr. Beierle came to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2009, after spendin...
Dr. Birrer earned his undergraduate degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated with a BS in Biology. He subsequently was accepted into the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his M.D. and Ph.D. in 1982 with his principle area of study in microbiology and immunology. He performed a medical internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and subsequently completed a residency in medicine at MGH. Dr. Birrer entered the med...
J. Edwin Blalock, Ph.D., joined the Department of Medicine as a Professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine and became the Scientific Director of the Lung Health Center in 2009. Dr. Blalock is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Florida where he received both a B.S. and Ph.D. degree. He was previously a Professor in the UAB Department of Physiology and Biophysics, having been recruited to UAB in 1986 from the University of Texas Medical Branch, where he...
Kirby I Bland, M.D. is a Professor of Surgical Oncology and Chair Emeritus of UAB's Department of Surgery and provides leadership to the Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Bland is internationally renowned for his contributions to surgical oncology and for his distinguished career as a general surgeon, researcher and editor.
Dr. Bland's research influence is far reaching. He has been a Principal Investigator/Program Leader of the Cancer Center's National Institute of Health's SPORE (Speci...
James A. Bonner, M.D., is Senior Advisor to the Director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Merle M. Salter Endowed Chair in Radiation Oncology. A member of the UAB faculty since 1998, Dr. Bonner served as co-leader of the Cancer Center’s Experimental Therapeutics Program from 1998 to 2010.
Dr. Bonner received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his M.D. from Wayne State University. His research interest focuses on methods of enhancing radiosensitization such a...
Jamie Cannon, M.D., FACS is an associate professor of surgery and directs the robotic surgical education program for the residency program. Dr. Cannon is double board certified in general and colorectal surgery. Dr. Cannon is a leader in minimally invasive approaches to colorectal disease, with an emphasis on robotics, colorectal cancer and sphincter-sparing operations. She is one of the highest volume academic colorectal surgeons in the country. Originally from Arizona, she is a graduate of the...
William R. Carroll, M.D., the George W. Barber Jr. Endowed Professor and widely-recognized leader in the field of head and neck oncology, has been named the chair of the Department of Otolaryngology in the UAB School of Medicine.
Carroll has served the department as its interim chair since the Department was established by the UA System Board of Trustees in October 2015. He took the role in a permanent basis on February 15, 2017.
The Department of Otolaryngology at UAB is a w...
Dr. Debasish Chattopadhyay received his BS in Chemistry and MS in Biochemistry from Calcutta University, India. He obtained Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Jadavpur University, India in 1989. He conducted his postdoctoral research at the Upjohn Company in Michigan. This work was part of an NIH funded collaborative effort involving several academic institutions and pharmaceutical industries for the discovery of potent antiretroviral drugs. Dr. Chattopadhyay's work focussed on the structure-functio...
In October 2015, Dr. Herbert Chen was named as the new Chairman of the Department of Surgery. A native of Wisconsin, Chen received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and began his medical education at the Duke University School of Medicine, graduating in 1992. He completed his surgical residency in general surgery at Johns Hopkins in 1999, along with a postdoctoral research fellowship in 1997 and a surgical oncology and endocrinology fellowship in 2000. Dr. Chen came to UAB from t...
Dr. Daniel Chu joined the UAB Department of Surgery in July 2014 as an assistant professor in the Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery. Born in Michigan and raised in North Carolina, Dr. Chu completed his undergraduate studies at Yale in 2002 and obtained his medical degree from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2006. He completed his general surgery residency at Boston University Medical Center in 2013, which included a two-year research fellowship. Dr. Chu then completed a fellowship in ...
I am an Associate Scientist and Clinical Investigator at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. Through this role, I have access to all clinical trials being conducted at UAB for all cancer types. As an active member of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), I likewise have access to a broad array of national cooperative group clinical trials for most malignancies, including breast, colon, lung and prostate cancer among others.
I have special research interests in the areas of ...
Dr. Carlo M. Contreras completed his surgical oncology training at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. There, his focus was on the most effective surgical approaches to hepatobiliary and pancreatic malignancies. As a member of the UAB Surgical Oncology faculty he cares for patients with a wide variety of malignancies including skin, soft tissue, and gastrointestinal. He promotes a patient-centered approach, and feels that effective communication is paramount in the multidisciplinary ...
Strategies for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in chronic lymphoproliferative disorders. Toxicity of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Population outcomes of hematologic malignancies.
Dr. deShazo sees patients with a variety of solid tumors and is especially interested in lung and genitourinary malignancies. She has taught medical students Introduction to Clinical Medicine for more than 5 years and was recently selected as one of ten faculty designated as Core Clinical Faculty for the Department of Internal Medicine Residency training program.
I received my M.D. degree from the University of Modena in Italy, and received internal medicine and medical oncology training at the university of Milan, in Italy, where I focused on the management of hematologic malignancies and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Following my fellowship, I joined the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX) for post-doctoral studies, where I completed the pre-clinical validation of an immunotherapy protocol for the treat...
Dr. Eckhoff received his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his medical diploma from the University of Minnesota. At the University of Wisconsin, he completed a general surgery residency, followed by a transplantation fellowship from 1986-1994. He joined the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1994. In May 2003, he was appointed director of the Division of Transplantation at UAB and in 2004 he became a full professor. Dr. Eckhoff is a member of ...
My major research interest is in multiple myeloma. I, along with my multiple myeloma colleagues, established an interdisciplinary myeloma clinic in March 2013, which is the first clinic of its kind in Alabama dedicated solely to plasma cell malignancies. I have also represented UAB on the NCCN Multiple Myeloma guidelines panel. My future and ongoing goals include opening and expanding clinical trials for the relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma patient population and to continue to serve the gro...
Cancer is complex disease, which involve alternation of multiple genetic and epigenetic factors and pathways in normal cells for them to become cancerous. Because of its complex nature and the ability of cancer cells to evolve rapidly undertreatment, cancer treatment with durable outcome is a challenging problem. Therefore, in-depth molecular understanding of cancer initiation and progression is necessary for developing effective therapies. In-order to identify and characterize critical cancer v...
Karin Hardiman, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Surgery in the UAB Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery. She was recruited from the University of Michigan in 2019 where she was in academic practice for eight years. Dr. Hardiman practices at the Birmingham VA and University Hospital. Her clinical interests are in colorectal cancer, anal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and anorectal disease. She utilizes minimally invasive surgery where possible.
Dr. Martin J. Heslin, M.D. joined the faculty of UAB Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology in 1996, following completion of his Surgical Oncology Fellowship at Sloan-Kettering Hospital. He is the James P. Hayes, Jr., Endowed Professor in Gastrointestinal Oncology.
He has extensive training in hepatobiliary, pancreatic, and colorectal surgery. He has established a thriving gastrointestinal oncology practice which focuses primarily on neoplasms of the pancreas, stomach, co...
My primary expertise is in the area of skin cancer. My work has concentrated in this area since 1998. I am skilled at presenting patients with the latest evidence-based treatments and at guiding them to the option that suits them best. I am also knowledgeable about specific issues that skin cancer patients face and am well versed at informing patients of these and helping them deal with them
Dr. Kase was raised in Park Ridge, IL, and graduated from Marquette University. He completed his Doctorate of Medicine in Dentistry at the Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry at Temple University. Afterwards, he proceeded to obtain certificates in prosthodontics at the Birmingham VA Prosthodontics Clinic as well as at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. He also received his certificate in maxillofacial prosthodontics and dental oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Ketterin...
Eugenia Kharlampieva is a polymer and materials chemist with research interests in the design and synthesis of polymeric materials for biomedical applications. She received her PhD in Polymer Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology and postdoctoral training in Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She joined UAB in 2010.
Dr. Kharlampieva has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, four book chapters, and six patents. She was awarde...
Dr. Lancaster is an assistant professor of surgery within the Division of Surgical Oncology and specializes in breast surgery. She works at the UAB Multidisciplinary Breast Clinic. Here she partners with medical oncologists and radiation oncologists to devise and tailor individual treatment plans for patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dr. Lancaster is a fellowship trained breast surgical oncologist. Her clinical practice focuses on the surgical management of invasive breast ca...
Suzanne E. Lapi, Ph.D. completed her undergraduate studies and Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada. She went on to complete a postdoctoral appointment at UCSF working with Henry VanBrocklin, PhD on the development of imaging agents for PSMA in prostate cancer before being recruited as a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis where she ultimately stayed on as a tenured Associate Professor until 2015.
Dr. Lapi is currently an Associate Professor of Radio...
Dr. Brenessa Lindeman is a native of Kentucky, receiving her M.D. from Vanderbilt, and is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. She did her residency in general surgery at Johns Hopkins University and completed a fellowship in endocrine surgery at the Harvard/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her clinical interests include thyroid cancer, benign thyroid disease, hyperparathyroidism, adrenal disease and surgical treatment of inherited endocrine syndromes.
Dr. Lindeman has distinguished herself as a...
I am from the Pacific Northwest and received my bachelors in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. During my time there, I did undergraduate research to examine the pre-steady state kinetic mechanism of DNA insertion catalyzed by retroviral integrase. I became intensely interested in enzyme mechanism and joined Tim Lohman’s group in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. I received...
I am currently assistant professor and associate scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center (UABCCC). I am board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology. My focus of interest is LYMPHOMA (Hodgkin lymphoma, Non Hodgkin lymphoma-T cell and B cell lymphomas). I specialize in treatments all types of lymphoma in my clinic. I am also involved in lymphoma related research, which includes genomic and proteomic (gene and protein related) studies in va...
Dr. Melanie Morris joined the faculty as an associate professor of surgery in 2010. In 2016, she was named the chief of general surgery for the Birmingham VA hospital. A native of Tennessee, she completed her undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University and her medical degree at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She completed her surgical residency in general surgery at Oregon Health and Science University and a colon and rectal surgery fellowship at the University of Texas Hea...
Graduate of Duke University undergraduate and Chapel Hill Medical School. Completed internship/residency at UAB followed by fellowship at UAB. Currently Professor of Medicine with a focused interest in education, clinical investigation in head and neck cancer and breast cancer, and quality metrics for patient care.
Catherine Parker is a breast surgical oncologist at the UAB Multidisciplinary Breast Clinic, a clinic in which medical oncologists, surgeons and radiation oncologists work together to see approximately 450 new breast cancer cases each year. She is a member of the UAB Breast Cancer Prevention and Risk Assessment Clinic.
Dr. Parker is a fellowship trained breast surgical oncologist with primary research interests in prevention and risk assessment of breast cancer, as well as breast cancer...
Dr. John R. Porterfield joined the UAB Department of Surgery in 2008, returning to Alabama, his home state, after training at the Mayo Clinic. He has since achieved associate professorship and additionally serves as director of the General Surgery Residency Program. A skilled instructor, with a gift for teaching, he has won numerous awards including several UAB Faculty Teacher of the Year awards. He is a dedicated mentor to a group of UAB student researchers and thrives on counseling high school...
Dr. Sushanth Reddy joined the faculty of the UAB Department of Surgery Division of Surgical Oncology in 2012 as an Assistant Professor. He also serves in the role of Associate Scientist in the Experimental Therapeutics Program at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.
An active clinician and researcher, Dr. Reddy’s focus is hepatopancreatobiliary surgery and the therapy and study of pancreatic cancers. He both publishes and lectures regarding his clinical research and findings. His most r...
I am a hematopathologist with four decades of clinical and diagnostic expertise in Flow Cytometry, benign and neoplastic hematopathology, lymphoma, leukemia, myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasms, plasma cell neoplasms/myeloma, hemoglobinopathies and Surgical Pathology. As educator, I developed Hematopathology teaching guidelines and curriculum for UAB Hematopathology fellows/trainees, and collaborated with other national experts in publishing training guidelines for Hematopathology prog...
Caroline A. Reich, M.D., Ph.D. is a graduate of Judson College in Marion, Alabama. She completed her graduate education and residency at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and her fellowship training at UAB. As a medical student, she was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, served as the National Chair of the Association of American Medical College’s Organization of Student Representatives and upon graduation received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Service. She also served on the National Instit...
I received a BS in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1977 and a PhD from Duke University in 1985. While a student at Duke University under Dr. Barbara Shaw in Chemistry and Dr. David Sedwick in the Department of Medicine, I obtained a diverse education in experimental design and basic research covering topics from cell culture, protein isolation and gel electrophoresis to organic synthesis and drug design.
After a brief postdoctoral fellowship at NIEHS in the Research Trian...
Michelle L. Robbin, MD, MS, FACR, FAIUM, FSRU completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She attended medical school at the Mayo Clinic, followed by an adult internal medicine internship at California Pacific Medical Center. Dr. Robbin completed a radiology residency and ultrasound fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. Thereafter, she joined the faculty in the ...
I am dual-trained in both Medical Hematology/Oncology and Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics at the University of Chicago. My specialty training allowed me to develop expertise in clinical trial design, pharmacokinetics (PK)/pharmacodynamics (PD) analysis, drug development, and patient care. In September 2015, I joined the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as an Assistant Professor of Medicine. My focus remains in highly aggressive women’s malignancies (i.e. triple-neg...
Dr. Velu did his postdoctoral research at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and at Clemson University. He joined the Medicinal Chemistry division of the Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering at UAB in 1997 and worked as a Staff Scientist through 2004. He also held a joined appointment in the Chemistry department as a Research Faculty during the period, 2002-2004. He joined the Chemistry department as an Assistant Professor in August of 2004 and was tenured and promoted to Associa...
Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, Senior Vice President of Medicine and Dean of the University of Alabama School of Medicine since October 2013, is a world-renowned surgeon, pancreatic cancer researcher, and pioneer in health disparities research. Dr. Vickers is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (Institute of Medicine) and of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has served on the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Board of Trustees and Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. In addition, ...
Dr. Wang is originally from China, and received his undergraduate education at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China (BS and B.Eng.) and graduate education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (MS) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD). At UW-Madison, Dr. Wang focused on studying kinetic protonation of enols, a classical physical organic chemistry topic, under the supervision of Professor Howard E. Zimmerman. He then joined Professor David Y. Gin at the University of Illinois-Urbana ...
Dr. Wei obtained his M.D. from China Medical University (Shenyang, China) and received his Ph.D. from Okayama University in Japan. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, Missouri) prior to coming to UAB, where he finished his pathology residency followed by a surgical pathology fellowship. He obtained additional clinical subspecialty training at Emory, Mt. Sinai and Harvard Universities. Dr. Wei is board certified in Anatomic and Clinical ...
Dr. Benjamin Wei is currently an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University before continuing onto Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons where he received his medical degree in 2005. Following medical school, he completed an internship and residency in general surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia from 2005-2010 and a cardiothoracic fellowship at Duke University from 2010-2013. He came to th...
Richard Whitley, M.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Microbiology, Medicine and Neurosurgery; Loeb Eminent Scholar Chair in Pediatrics; Co-Director, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases; Vice-Chair, Department of Pediatrics; Senior Scientist, Department of Gene Therapy; Scientist, Cancer Research and Training Center; Faculty, Gene Therapy Center; Associate Director for Drug Discovery and Development and Senior Leader, Pediatric Oncology Program, O’Neal Comprehensi...
George Yang, MD, PhD, went to undergraduate and medical school at Northwestern University. He earned his PhD in molecular genetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He completed his residency in general surgery at Stanford University. He remained on faculty at Stanford until coming to UAB in 2018. He is a member of the Association for Academic Surgery, the Society of University Surgeons, of which he is a past-President, and the American Surgical Association, and a member of the Editorial...
