| Director | Paul Benson, MD Dr. Benson, a forensic and anatomic pathologist, and Autopsy Section Head for UAB hospital, oversees the operations of the UAB Regional Autopsy Center, teaches autopsy pathology to residents and medical students and enables tissue based research collaborations. He has performed more than 4000 autopsies, including infectious disease cases with Tuberculosis or COVID-19. Dr. Benson earned his MD from the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo, completed Anatomic and Clinical Pathology residency at the University of Virginia and his Forensic Pathology fellowship at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. He is certified by the American Board of Pathology in Anatomic & Clinical Pathology and Forensic Pathology. His current interests are pathology education and fostering TB and COVID research collaborations using autopsy and surgical pathology materials. He is the principle investigator on the UAB RECOVER NIH Tissue Pathology Study and a key co-Investigator on the R24 grant led by Adrie Steyn, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Africa Health Research Institute, or AHRI, in Durban, South Africa, which provides user-requested infected human lung tissue and analytical services to tuberculosis researchers worldwide. Dr. Benson is a Scientist at the UAB O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and a Scientist at the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Research. |
| Co-Director | Upender Manne, M.S, Ph.D Dr. Manne is a Professor of Pathology and Director of the Translational Anatomic Pathology Section, Division of Anatomic Pathology. He has secondary appointments as a Professor in the UAB departments of Surgery and Epidemiology. Dr. Manne is a Senior Scientist of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and a Senior Scientist of the UAB Minority Health Disparity Research Center. He has worked with Dr. William Grizzle, former director of the UAB Tissue Biorepository, in tissue sciences and for over a decade he worked with Dr. Grizzle for the Biomarker Reference Laboratory of the Early Detection Research Network of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Manne is a leader in the field of cancer biomarker development research, translational pathology, tissue genomics, applied informatics, ethics in translational research, and cancer education and training. For more than 20 years, he has served as a Principal Investigator on several investigator-initiated R, P, and U series grants. |
| Associate Director | Dezhi Wang, M.D., MBA. Dr. Wang is the Program Director III of the UAB Tissue Biorepository-Pathology Core Research Lab. Dr. Wang uses her 10 years’ experience in lab management to oversee and guide both the Tissue Biorepository (TBR) and Pathology Core Research Lab (PCRL) labs in further research endeavors. Dr. Wang is Foreign Medical Graduate trained in patient care as well as clinical research study, she has also received her MBA degree from UAB Collat School of Business. She is an ASCP board certified Histotechnologist (HTL) since 2005, and received Qualification in IHC (QIHC) from ASCP in 2012. Dr. Wang works with Drs. Sameer Al Diffalha and Upender Manne in harmonizing TBR & PCRL operations to streamline the process of tissue related research request to the core facility. She also helps to efficiently allocate research resources and provide cutting-edge translational research technologies with multidisciplinary approach. |
UAB-TBR Staff
| Program Manager I | Amanda Mitchell-Griffin |
| Researcher IV (Procurement Team Lead) | Cheryl June |
| Researcher I (Procurement Team) | Hunter Segrest |
| Researcher I (Procurement Team) | Christopher Jamaal Burks |
| Researcher I (Histology) | Velencia Whitfield |
| Researcher II (Histology) | Luke Glover |
| Researcher II (Histology & Histomorphometry) | Andrew Parks |
| Researcher IV (TMA & IHC Lead) | John Ness |
| TBR Consultant | Kathy Sexton |
| Informatics Lead | Bade Iriabho |
| Informatics | Srianil Peddi |
