Kimberly Allison
Professor Kimberly Allison is the Vice Chair of Education at Stanford Pathology, where she specializes in the practice of breast pathology. She directs a Breast Pathology Fellowship as well as the Breast Pathology Service at Stanford. Her academic interests are focused on the development of high-quality education and diagnostic standards and she is active in setting practice guidelines in diagnostic testing relating to breast cancer, including ASCO/CAP ER/PR and HER2 Testing Guidelines, NCCN Breast Cancer Treatment Guidelines and the 5th edition of the WHO Breast Tumours.
Gilbert Bigras
Dr. Gilbert Bigras is currently appointed as Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry of the University of Alberta (Alberta, Canada). He is a breast pathologist working at the Cross Cancer Institute (Edmonton, Canada) and the medical IHC lead for the Edmonton Zone IHC Laboratory. He obtained a MD degree and Anatomical Pathology specialist certificate (FRCPC) at the Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada). He obtained a PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering (Grenoble, France). His current research interest is the utilization of Artificial Intelligence applied to Biomarkers.
Pierre Fiset
Dr Pierre-Olivier Fiset MDCM PhD FRCPC, is Anatomical Pathologist and associate professor at the McGill University Health Centre. His practice includes mainly Thoracic Pathology (fellowship at University of Toronto) but also Medical Kidney Pathology, Gastrointestinal Pathology and Molecular and Biomarker Pathology. He is currently the assistant residency program director. His research includes interests in artificial intelligence, immunotherapy and biomarkers and novel teaching approaches for residents and medical students.
Allen Gown
Dr. Gown received his M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY in 1975, and then completed his Pathology Residency as well as Pathology Fellowship training at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Gown then joined the faculty and rose through the ranks to full Professor of Pathology, also serving as attending pathologist at the University of Washington Medical Center. He left the University of Washington in 1997 to found PhenoPath, which grew into an internationally renowned reference laboratory. Dr. Gown is a pathologist-scientist recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in the diagnostic and research applications of immunohistochemistry (IHC). He has developed numerous clinically important monoclonal antibodies employed in pathology laboratories around the world (e.g., HMB45, 34βE12). Dr. Gown has contributed extensively to the expanding horizons of IHC with over 300 peer- reviewed publications, and is on the editorial board of several major pathology journals. He is Clinical Professor of Pathology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
Christian R. Marshall
Dr. Marshall is a Clinical Laboratory Director in the Division of Genome Diagnostics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. Dr. Marshall is certified as a Diplomat of the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics and a Fellow of the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists. Medical genetics has been the focus of his career, specifically in identifying genomic variation that causes rare disorders and then translating this knowledge into diagnostics. His current research focusses on the utility of genome sequencing in diagnostics as well as assessment of new sequencing technologies and methods for translation into diagnostic testing. Dr. Marshall’s other interest is developing standards for clinical genome sequencing. He was the inaugural Chair of the Medical Genome Initiative – a North American consortium aiming to expand access to, and create standards for, high-quality clinical genome sequencing to diagnose rare genetic diseases. As a laboratory director Dr. Marshall leads the clinical genome sequencing and informatics program in Genome Diagnostics and aims to broaden the use of genome testing to improve the health of all patients at SickKids.
Søren Nielsen
Søren Nielsen is Director of Nordic immunohistochemical Quality Control (NordiQC) being an international external quality assessment (EQA) scheme for diagnostic pathology laboratories. In addition to the EQA scheme NordiQC offers technical and educational service to laboratories and IHC stakeholders globally and have entered collaboration with the main IHC industry companies for consultancy services. In NordiQC, he also functions as scientific lead, assessor and data analyst in the NordiQC general module, breast module, companion diagnostic module and HER-2 ISH module.He is a regular lecturer and organizer of national and international immunohistochemical workshops, particularly in the field of protocol optimization and standardization.He is author and co-author of more than 60 scientific papers and several book chapters based on immunohistochemical studies. Member of the editorial board of international journals and the NordiQC representative in IQN Path, being a global network for external quality schemes in pathology.Søren Nielsen is educated as biomedical scientist.
Sharon Nofech-Mozes
Dr. Sharon Nofech-Mozes obtained her medical degree from Tel Aviv University in Israel, where she was trained as an anatomic pathologist. She then completed 3 year fellowship in breast and gynecologic pathology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Nofech-Mozes is a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She works as a staff pathologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre since 2007, where she previously led the breast pathology team. Her academic interest is in the area of prognostic and predictive markers in breast cancer hormone receptors, HER2/neu, Ki67 testing and utilization of multigene predictive assays in invasive breast carcinoma. Being heavily engaged in clinical service Dr. Nofech-Mozes is participating in breast and gynecologic pathology reporting over a thousand biomarkers report every year. She has a career long interest in in ductal carcinoma in situ and acts as the leading pathologist for the Ontario DCIS cohort, one of the largest population based cohort in the world.
Simon Patton
Simon Patton, PhD is Chief Executive of EMQN CIC – a global leader in the provision of genomics focussed External Quality Assessment (EQA) / Proficiency Testing (PT) schemes. He trained at the University of Liverpool in marine biology, before doing his doctorate in Genetics at the University of Cambridge. Simon’s career has focussed on driving improvements in the standardisation and quality of diagnostic laboratory testing – a field that he has worked in since 1999 through his involvement with the EMQN.Simon has extensive knowledge of the clinical healthcare molecular diagnostics field, focussing on genomics (genetics, pathology, technology). He is passionate about ensuring equity of access to accurate high-quality genomic testing for all patients. Simon has worked in the UK public sector (NHS; Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) for most of his career. He joined the NHS in 1999 as the Executive Administrator for EMQN which was at that time funded by a European Commission grant. Over the following years, Simon has been instrumental in helping the business to grow, expanding its membership to more that 2500 laboratories in 85 different countries, and overseeing its successful spin out from the UK NHS in 2021 into an independent private company.
Jennifer Roberts
Jennifer completed a BSc in Biology and then a post-graduate program diploma in Genetics Technology. She worked as a Genetics Technologist for several years in Molecular Genetics and Cytogenetics, and then taught the Genetics Technology program at the Michener Institute. During that time, she completed a Masters of Adult Education. In 2013, Jennifer was offered an opportunity to become a Staff Technologist with Ontario Laboratory Accreditation (also known as IQMH, now Accreditation Canada Diagnostics). Since then, Jennifer has been coordinating and executing accreditation assessments for medical laboratories, in French and English, and in several different countries including Africa and Hong Kong. She also served as project manager for several versions of the IQMH accreditation requirements during that time. In 2023, Jennifer accepted the role of Senior Program Manager, and is now overseeing operations in Accreditation Canada Diagnostics.
Adam Smith
Dr. Smith is currently the Director of the Cancer Cytogenetics Laboratory at the University Health Network.He is a dual-boarded Clinical Cytogeneticist and Clinical Molecular Geneticist certified by the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists (CCMG). Dr. Smith is also a fellow of the American College of Genetics and Genomics (FACMG) and a Certified Laboratory Geneticist (erCLG) by the European Board of Medical Genetics. The Cancer Cytogenetics Laboratory at UHN is a national and world leader in the clinical implementation of Optical Genome Mapping for use in hematologic malignancies. Dr. Smith has given many national and international invited talks and presentations about Optical Genome Mapping and is involved in the development of guidelines for the validation and clinical use of OGM.
Emina Torlakovic
Emina Emilia Torlakovic, MD, PhD is a professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, with previous appointment at the University of Toronto. She is a Division Head of Hematopathology, Saskatchewan Health Authority. She was a founding member of the NordiQC, has co-founded CIQC, and most recently founded Canadian Biomarker Quality Assurance (CBQA) as well as CBQAReadout.ca (inter)national academic quality assurance programs, which she is currently directing. Dr. Torlakovic is the Chair of the National Standards Committee for High Complexity Testing of the Canadian Association of Pathologists. She is the President of the International Society for Immunohistochemistry and Molecular Morphology (ISIMM) and a Board Member and a Treasurer of the International Quality Network for Pathology (IQN Path). She is also currently leading several projects related to national and global standardization of clinical IHC applications. She has contributed to development of numerous practice guidelines for biomarker testing as well as for biomarker proficiency testing.
Megan Troxell
Dr. Troxell earned her MD and PhD, studying mutant E-cadherin and epithelial cell-cell junction dynamics. She did Anatomic Pathology training, including fellowship experience in Surgical pathology, Immunodiagnosis, and Renal Pathology at Stanford. She was on faculty and directed the Immunohistochemistry lab at OHSU in Portland, Oregon for over 10 years. More recently at Stanford, her focus is breast and renal pathology. She is co-medical director of the Immunodiagnosis laboratory, and works closely with residents and fellows. She has served on College of American Pathologist’s Immunohistochemistry committee, along with two CAP immunohistochemistry related guideline committees.