| Director | Sameer Al Diffalha, MD Dr. Al-Diffalha is an Associate Professor in the Anatomic Pathology Division of the UAB Department of Pathology. He is a board-certified surgical pathologist with specialty expertise and boards in gastrointestinal, liver and pancreas pathology. He has also completed surgical pathology fellowship in breast pathology. Dr. Al-Diffalha has experience in biobanking and received training in tissue sciences at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center. He has been working side by side with Dr. William Grizzle, former director of the UAB Tissue Biorepository, and the the Biorepository team since 2017 to provide pathology expertise for the Tissue Biorepository. |
| 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 Director I | Suzanne Byan-Parker |
| Program Coordinator II | Amanda Mitchell-Griffin |
| Laboratory Supervisor | Patty Williams |
| Researcher IV (Tissue Collection Coordinator) | Cheryl June |
| Researcher I (Surgical Pathology) | Jace Baines |
| Researcher I (Surgical Pathology) | Velencia Whitfield |
| Researcher I (Surgical Pathology) | Lee Zellander |
| Researcher III (Pathology Core Lab) | John Ness |
| Researcher IV (Pathology Core Lab) | Adam Martin |
