After 43 years of service at the University of Iowa, Dr. Robert “Bob” Robinson has retired. Upon his retirement, Dr. Robinson has been appointed Professor Emeritus of Pathology.

The Department of Pathology celebrates recent faculty promotions for the following faculty, effective July 1, 2025. These promotions reflect dedicated service to not only the department, but to their colleagues, students and subspecialties of study.

Dr. Alexander Boyden was awarded a two-year R21 research grant entitled “Gamma herpesvirus impact on required B cell:CD4 T interactions in a B cell-dependent, antibody-independent mouse model of multiple sclerosis” from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

On Friday, May 30th, the Johns Hopkins Medicine Alumni Association presented the 2025 Distinguished Medical School Alumnus Award to Brooks Jackson, MD, MBA, director of the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins Medicine from 2001 to 2014.

Nitin Karandikar, MD, PhD, has been named the enterprise chief strategy officer for University of Iowa Health Care, expanding his executive leadership responsibilities while he continues as professor and chair of the Department of Pathology. 

The Carver College of Medicine End-of-Year Awards are presented at the close of each academic year to recognize the talents and commitments of students, residents, faculty, and staff towards furthering the education at the Carver College of Medicine. This year, the Department of Pathology was well represented with two recipients of the End-of-Year Awards.

The Special Achievement in Pathology M4 Award is given by the University of Iowa Department of Pathology in conjunction with the Iowa Association of Pathologists (IAP). This recognition is awarded to graduating M4s who showed exceptional interest in or aptitude for pathology or pathology-related research.

Dr. Shailesh Shahi has been awarded a three-year research grant from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for his project titled, “Determining how obesity alters the gut microbiota to drive the severity of CNS autoimmune inflammatory disease.”

On Tuesday, April 22, 2025, Brad Seaton, Clinical Department Administrator of the University of Iowa Department of Pathology, was elected to serve on the Academic Pathology Executives Section (APEX) Council as the Midwest Regional Representative.

Megan Samuelson, MD, clinical associate professor and director of anatomic pathology in the Department of Pathology, received the Jo Ann Benda Surgical Pathology Professorship during a Carver College of Medicine investiture ceremony on April 17.

Mohit Upadhye successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on March 27, 2025, completing the Experimental Pathology graduate program in Dr. Nitin Karandikar’s lab at the University of Iowa. His dissertation, titled “myelin-reactive CD8+ T cells influence conventional dendritic cell subsets towards a mature and regulatory phenotype in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE),” uncovers a novel immunoregulatory role for CD8+ T cells in the context of multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS).

Elizabeth Escue successfully defended her M.S. thesis on March 26, 2025, completing the Pathology M.S. program. Her thesis, titled The Ability of Memory CD8 T Cell Subsets to Numerically and Functionally Recover Following Whole-Body Irradiation is Influenced by Their History of Cognate Antigen Exposures, explores the impact of whole-body irradiation (WBI) on memory CD8 T cells with repeated cognate-antigen (cognate-Ag) exposures.