On September 1, 2021, the Department welcomes a new faculty member to the Division of Genomic Diagnostics and Bioinformatics, directed by Alexander “Craig” Mackinnon, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
Yulong Fu, Ph.D., joins the UAB Department of Pathology as Assistant Professor, Genomic Diagnostics and Bioinformatics. This is his first faculty position.
Dr. Fu received his Ph.D. from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, in 2010. He went on to complete his postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). In this role, he learned to use next-generation sequencing technology to study thyroid hormone receptors, which play pivotal roles in development and disease, to regulate the expression of their target genes on different thyroid hormone levels.
In 2015, Fu joined the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. to develop functional assays to reclassify the variants of uncertain significance that were generated from clinical genomic sequencing. In 2018, he began his two-year American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG) fellowship training with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), in the specialty of Laboratory Genetics and Genomics. Upon completion, Fu joined a clinical laboratory director training program in the Children’s National Medical Center Department of Pathology.
Fu has published more than 20 research papers and co-authored two book chapters. Beyond research and clinical practice, he is an active teacher and mentor who has taught the graduate-level course, “Advances in Genome Editing” at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
He holds board certifications in the AMBGG and the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP). His experience in laboratory diagnosis, research and teaching will be an invaluable addition to the Division of Genomic Diagnostics and Bioinformatics.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Yulong Fu to the UAB Department of Pathology.