In his fourth decade of service to UAB, Gene Siegal, M.D., Ph.D., Robert W. Mowry Endowed Professor and Executive Vice Chair, Department of Pathology, can add the title of Distinguished Professor to his long list of accomplishments. Siegal’s appointment was approved by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees in April 2021, and is the first such honor for a pathologist at UAB.

During his 30+ year tenure at UAB, Siegal has set a high standard through his professional, academic, research, and service contributions. In his current role as Executive Vice Chair, he delivers tremendous administrative support and experience to the operations of both the department and the institution.

“By the very nature of his more than three-decade commitment to excellence in this academic community, his unwavering dedication to groups underrepresented in medicine, and the recognition and goodwill he has generated for UAB by the model of physician-scholar that he sets, Dr. Siegal is worthy of being named a Distinguished Professor,” says George Netto, M.D., Robert and Ruth Anderson Endowed Chair, UAB Department of Pathology. “We are very proud to see him recognized by the institution for his lifelong commitment to clinical, educational and administrative endeavors.”

Siegal completed medical school at the University of Louisville in Kentucky; Anatomic Pathology residency at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Medicine, Rochester, MN; and a Ph.D. in experimental pathology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He completed a research fellowship at the Mayo College of Medicine; a surgical pathology fellowship at the University of Minnesota; and a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH. In 1990, UAB recruited Siegal from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the mission of creating a “world-class” anatomic pathology division. At the time, fewer than 15 faculty and 1 resident served the clinical needs of the entire department.

Siegal’s recruitment and restructuring efforts have given rise to clinical excellence in an impressive range of subspecialties. He was critical to building the department’s internationally recognized educational program, which has successfully trained a vast number of medical and graduate students, residents, and fellows.

Best known for his experimental work in tumor invasion and metastasis in breast cancer, as well as for gene therapy, Siegal has held dozens of grants over his professional career, generating many important research discoveries. He holds professorships in four UAB departments and is a founding member of many Centers on campus. He has lectured more than 150 times around the world and given 6 named lectures. Siegal’s publication record includes 10 books and 850 peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, abstracts, and other professional writings. He is Editor-in-Chief of Laboratory Investigation and has provided his vast expertise to an astounding number of editorial boards in his career, covering experimental and diagnostic pathology, and related disciplines.

Since 2008, Siegal has served as Director of UAB Hospital Labs, holding the institution’s crucial CLIA license. He developed and continues to supervise the department’s highly successful outreach operation, the Community Practice Pathology Program. He served as Interim Chair of Pathology from 2015-2016 and just concluded several years as Interim Chair of the Department of Genetics (2018-2021).

In the national and international sphere, Siegal's abilities have earned him membership on dozens of committees and boards. He served on NIH Study Sections for 14 years without interruption, and served on two FDA panels. Siegal has reviewed for many national and international grant-reviewing agencies. His leadership assignments for professional associations include serving as President of the Arthur Purdy Stout Society of Surgical Pathologists, and President of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, the largest pathology society in the world. Many awards and honors, including election to AOA, ODK, and Phi Beta Delta, the Honor Society for International Scholars along with the prestigious Royal Society of Medicine, London, recognize Siegal’s outstanding service and contributions to academic medicine. The American Society of Investigation Pathology honored him with its Distinguished Educator Award and the College of American Pathologists with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Recently, Sigma Xi, the Research Honor Society named him to its inaugural class of Fellows.