October 9, 2008

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Professor of Pathology Gene P. Siegal, M.D., Ph.D., has been named the inaugural holder of the Robert. W. Mowry Endowed Professorship in Pathology. The appointment was made by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.

Siegal is an international expert on the hormonal and nutritional factors that impact the cancer cell's ability to invade and metastasize. His lab is working with a first-of-its-kind model membrane to explore tumor migration through tissues.

In addition to his pathology post, Siegal is a professor of cell biology and surgery, and a senior scientist in UAB's Comprehensive Cancer Center, Center for Aging, Center for Metabolic Bone Disease, Gene Therapy Center and the BioMatrix Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Center.

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Siegal earned his medical degree from the University of Louisville and his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He spent several years at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and served as a pathophysiology research associate at the National Cancer Institute. He came to UAB in 1990 after nearly a decade at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Siegal holds editorial board positions with multiple journals and is currently the editor-in-chief of Laboratory Investigation. His professional honors span four decades and include a fellowship in the Royal Society of Medicine in London and a shared Farrell Prize from the International Skeletal Society, of which he is a member.

The endowed position is named for Robert W. Mowry, M.D., a UAB professor emeritus in the Department of Pathology who once directed the anatomical pathology laboratory and the pathology graduate program. Mowry is former professor of health services administration and a past visiting scholar to the University of Cambridge in England.