Biography
I am the lead pathologists’ assistant (PA) certified by the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) with a master of health science degree appointed for 9 years as an instructor at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and a clinical adjunct professor of Quinnipiac University’s Pathologists’ Assistant Program. My clinical work includes recognizing and sampling macroscopic disease within surgical pathology specimens postoperatively or during surgical intraoperative consultation at Ben Taub General Hospital. Occasionally, I cover St. Joseph Medical Center and BCM’s West Belfort lab in this capacity. With optimal patient care as my goal, I decrease the workload of the pathologists and residents who I simultaneously teach by leading through example. After observing and assessing various pathology trainees, including fellows, pathologists’ assistant students, medical students and shadowing undergraduates, I developed a passion to strengthen both pathology residency and pathologists’ assistant programs which is reflected in my curriculum development efforts. For example, by request of the residents, I conduct monthly Interesting Gross Case Workshops currently teleconferenced at a national level to two PA programs. I received Spring 2016’s Fulbright and Jaworski Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching Evaluation verifying the quality and quantity of my educational efforts. Because literature and statistics expose gaps in pathology residency education and dwindling interest to enter the pathology field by medical students, I created and directed the 2017 All-City Anatomic Pathology Symposium sponsored by BCM, which introduced the field of pathology to medical students and undergraduates and offered recapitulation to residents and fellows and ASCP CMLE credits to PAs. The symposium fostered citywide collaborative teaching platforms for pathologists and PAs. The planning committee was comprised of academic PAs-members of the local PA professional organization, Pathassist of Texas in Houston, LLC, founded and presided by myself. While planning this academic feat, American Association of Pathologists’ Assistants offered me speaking engagements for 2 consecutive years and requested my help to incorporate academic PA education into their educational plan. My suggestions produced roundtable discussion groups/workshops for 2 annual conferences. While revolutionizing the PA field as a respected and recognized academic resource for pathology learners, as an example to my colleagues, I strengthened my faculty portfolio by expanding my research and scholarly efforts, an area of weakness for PAs. I designed five research projects with 4 receiving IRB approval. I serve as a first author on four manuscripts with one accepted and one published. In addition, I am a PI for Baylor College of Medicine Tissue Resource, TCGA Tissue Source Repository Tissue Source Site for Clinical and Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Phase III funded by National Institute of Health, Genome Research Institute and National Cancer Institute. To further implement changes in pathology education, I am a resident in the 6th cohort for the University of Houston’s Executive Doctorate in Professional Leadership Program (EdD) which focuses upon educational needs in medicine and problem-solving strategies through intensive research, thus continuing BCM’s mission of improving health through science, innovation, teamwork and excellence.
Research Interest
Pathology
Biography
Professor George L. Mendz has an MSc from the University of Barcelona (Spain), and a PhD from the University of NSW. He has been Lecturer at the College of Natural Sciences, the University of Puerto Rico (San Juan); Research Associate at the School of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry, the University of Sydney; ARC Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, the University of NSW; Associate Professor at the Department of Bacteriology, the University of Bordeaux II; and Associate Professor at the School of Medical Sciences, the University of NSW.
Research Interest
More recently, he had acquired expertise in global analyses involving proteomics and transcriptomics by investigating microorganism responses to stress, as well as in bacterial genome sequencing and the application of metagenomics to characterise bacterial populations.
Biography
Dr. Joshi is director of center for surgical infections and biofilms. He is an associate professor in the Departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Dermatology, and Surgery, and an adjunct professor at the A.J. Drexel Plasma Institute, as well as Drexel's School of Biomedical Engineering. He has a special interest in emerging bacterial infections, novel disinfection and sterilization techniques, and biodefense bacterial vaccines. Since 1987, Dr. Joshi has taught undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students, and trained doctoral and postdoctoral, residents and fellows for research. He has been mentoring graduates and medical students, who now have successful careers in medicine, academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Since 2004, he has been a member of international mentoring program and minority mentoring program of American Society of Microbiology (ASM), and Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA). He is physician-researcher-teacher, and eligible member of American Board of Medical Microbiology.
Research Interest
Emerging bacterial infections, host-pathogen interactions, hospital-acquired infections, antimicrobial drug resistance, novel infection control strategies, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, botulism & bacterial biofilms