Former and current UCSF Clinical Chemistry Fellows at the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine Annual Meeting (summer 2024)
Former and current UCSF Clinical Chemistry Fellows at the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine Annual Meeting (summer 2025)
For two decades, the UCSF Clinical Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in our department has trained the next generation of clinical chemists to lead clinical chemistry laboratories across the country. The program was founded by Dr. Alan Wu in 2005 and received accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation in Clinical Chemistry (ComACC) in 2006. Dr. Kara Lynch became the Co-Director of the program in 2007 after completing the fellowship and joining the department as faculty. Additional program alumni now serving as faculty include Dr. Deborah French (2008) and Dr. Xander van Wijk (2017). Dr. Jeffrey Whitman (2020) completed the clinical chemistry fellowship during his Clinical Pathology residency and serves as faculty in the program. Dr. Simone Arvisais-Anhalt participated in clinical chemistry fellowship activities during her UCSF Informatics Fellowship and now contributes to the program by providing clinical informatics training to our fellows. San Francisco General Hospital serves as the primary training site; however, fellows gain exposure to chemistry testing across the department and complete a pediatric clinical chemistry rotation at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
The two-year fellowship is designed for PhD- and/or MD-trained scientists seeking comprehensive preparation for certification by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry (ABCC) and leadership careers in clinical chemistry laboratories. Rather than a one-year, post-residency chemical pathology fellowship, it is structured as an immersive training experience that emphasizes professional development across the full scope of clinical chemistry practice. The program integrates advanced technical expertise in chemistry, hands-on clinical service, administrative and laboratory leadership training, and translational research, preparing well-rounded clinical chemists for directorship roles in academic and industry settings. Our program has a longstanding national reputation for excellence in training, particularly in clinical toxicology and mass spectrometry. Fellows enter with a strong foundation in basic science research and graduate with the clinical acumen required to direct clinical chemistry laboratories. Notably, three former fellows were UCSF graduate school alumni: Sarah Shugarts (2012) and Howard Horng (2017) from Dr. Les Benet’s Laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, and Briana Fitch (2022) from Dr. Scott Kogan’s laboratory in our department.
ComACC is an independent nonprofit organization that accredits postdoctoral training programs in clinical chemistry to promote excellence, recognize high-quality programs, and attract qualified trainees. Accreditation ensures that education and training standards keep pace with advances in medicine and laboratory science through detailed curriculum review, evaluation of faculty and institutional resources, comprehensive self-study documentation, and site visits conducted every five years. Our program completed a successful site visit in December 2025, and its accreditation was renewed for an additional five years. Graduates of accredited programs are eligible to sit for certification examinations, primarily the American Board of Clinical Chemistry (ABCC), prior to completing their required professional experience. To meet the evolving demands of laboratory medicine, ComACC-accredited programs are expanding their curricula to include emerging areas such as molecular diagnostics, forensic toxicology, informatics, laboratory management, point-of-care testing, and core laboratory disciplines. Our fellowship is one of 37 accredited programs in the United States and Canada.
A distinguishing feature of our program is the extensive translational research in which trainees engage during their fellowship. Their work spans diagnostic medicine, with a particular emphasis on emerging technologies. Our institution was an early leader in implementing liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and high-resolution mass spectrometry in the clinical laboratory, driven in large part by our fellows' contributions. They have developed mass spectrometry–based laboratory-developed tests that have supported comprehensive clinical drug testing for more than a decade. This work has included complex method development, mass spectral library construction, creation of data analysis pipelines, and the establishment of best practices for validation and ongoing quality management. Fellows have published extensively in this area and applied these technologies to complex clinical cases, as well as to monitor the evolving drug supply in San Francisco to inform public health interventions. Their research contributions extend beyond mass spectrometry to the evaluation of diagnostic markers for myocardial infarction, sepsis, therapeutic drug monitoring, COVID-19, acute kidney injury, and other health conditions.
Since the program’s inception in 2005, 22 fellows have graduated from the program. Our alumni hold clinical chemistry medical director positions at leading academic medical centers across the country, including UCSF, Stanford, Brown, Weill Cornell, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. Four graduates serve as Chemistry Medical Directors at the Kaiser Regional Laboratory in Northern California. Other alumni have pursued careers in industry, serving as directors in for-profit reference laboratories or diagnostic companies such as LabCorp and Beckman Coulter.
Many of our alumni contribute to the field through active participation in the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine (ADLM; formerly the American Association for Clinical Chemistry) Annual Scientific Meeting, where they present and provide educational content. Each year, our program hosts a reunion at the ADLM meeting, offering faculty and alumni an opportunity to reconnect. What began as a small breakfast gathering with a handful of graduates has grown into a well-attended, much-anticipated annual event.
As we look to the future, the UCSF Clinical Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellowship Program remains committed to advancing innovation, expanding interdisciplinary collaboration, and preparing leaders who will shape the next era of laboratory medicine. By continually evolving our curriculum to address emerging technologies, data science, precision medicine, and the changing healthcare landscape, we will build on two decades of excellence to ensure our fellows are equipped not only to meet the demands of today’s laboratories, but to define the standards of tomorrow.