2026 Daljit S. & Elaine Sarkaria Lectureship & Quality Day

Professor of Pathology and Director, Division of Quality
and Health Improvement
University of Michigan

Title: “Working to Transform the Patient Experience from a Pathology Platform: Lessons Learned (and Still Being Learned!) at Michigan Medicine”

Bio: Dr. Scott Owens earned a B.S. in biology from Calvin College and an M.D. from Wayne State University, followed by residency and fellowship training in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the University of Michigan, completed in 2006. After serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he was active in teaching and research, he joined the University of Michigan Department of Pathology in 2010 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013 a professor in 2017. He currently practices gastrointestinal pathology and serves as Director of the Division of Quality and Health Improvement. He has authored more than 100 scholarly works, is a frequent national and international speaker, and is board certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology.

Professor
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Referral Lab Optimization"

Bio: Dr. Alyssa Ziman is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She serves as Section Chief of the Division of Transfusion Medicine and as CLIA Medical Director for the Clinical Laboratories at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where she also oversees send-out testing and champions initiatives focused on laboratory quality, stewardship, and operational efficiency. Her work emphasizes improving test utilization, leveraging electronic order entry tools, and enhancing patient safety across complex laboratory systems. Dr. Ziman is a scientific member of the Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion (BEST) Collaborative and serves in national leadership roles with the AABB and the American Board of Pathology.

Professor
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Quality Improvement and Stewardship in Genetic Testing" 

Bio: Josh Deignan, PhD, FACMG, is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is one of the Associate Directors of the UCLA Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories. He received his undergraduate degree in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, and he received his PhD in Pathology and completed his medical genetics fellowship training at UCLA. He is board certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics in Clinical Molecular Genetics and Genomics.  He co-Chairs the UCLA Laboratory Stewardship Task Force and is the Laboratory Genetics and Genomics (LGG) fellowship program director.  He is also a Molecular Genetics Director on the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) Board of Directors.

Professor
Section Chief, Clinical Microbiology
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Increasing Blood Culture Volume for Improved Sepsis Detection"

Bio: Dr. Omai Garner is a Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Microbiology in the UCLA Health System. He received his PhD from UC San Diego in Biomedical Sciences. He was a Postdoctoral Clinical Microbiology CPEP Fellow in the Department of Pathology at UCLA, and a former McNair Scholar. Dr. Garner is Board Certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiology. Dr. Garner's research focuses on novel Point of Care Devices for infectious disease diagnosis in low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).

Allison Nomura, CLS, MLS (ASCP)^CM
Sr. CLS Specialist, Quality Monitor
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Increasing Blood Culture Volume for Improved Sepsis Detection"

Bio: Allison Nomura is the Sr. CLS Specialist, Quality Monitor for the Clinical Microbiology and Immunoserology Laboratory at UCLA Health.  She received her BS in Microbiology from UC Davis.  She has worked at UCLA Health for the past 12 years, prior to that she oversaw the Quality Assurance program for six clinical laboratories at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.  Allison’s interests are in process improvement, data analysis, and taking large amounts of data and compressing them into simple graphs to illustrate big changes.  Allison is an avid fan of college gymnastics and has been know to track and trend data during the competition season.

Medical Student
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science 
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Title: "Empowering Patients: A Closer Look at Their Own Tissue (Pathology Clinic)"

Mentor: Dr. Kene Ojukwu

Bio: Christopher Gonzalez is a medical student at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with a strong commitment to health equity and patient-centered care. His background in community health programming and his current work in dermatology and pathology focus on improving communication, health literacy, and patient engagement in safety net settings. Through his work on a Pathology Clinic model, he aims to enhance how patients understand their diagnoses and participate in shared decision-making, particularly within underserved communities. 

PGY-3
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) by Duffy Status"

Mentor: Dr. Zhen Mei 

Bio: Heather Ross is a third year AP/CP resident at the UCLA Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She completed her undergraduate education at Cornell University and medical school education at Thomas Jefferson University. After pathology residency, she will be staying at UCLA to complete a fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology.

Microbiology Fellow
University of California Los Angeles

Title: "Validation and Implementation of a Semi-Quantitative Real-Time PCR Assay for Malaria Diagnosis" 

Mentor: Dr. Shaun Yang

Bio: Amorce Lima is a second year Clinical Microbiology Fellow at UCLA. He received his PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Prior to attending this fellowship, he worked as a Clinical Scientist in the Esoteric Testing/R&D Laboratory at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa. His primary research focus has been in molecular assay development and validation for infectious disease laboratory diagnosis which has led to multiple peer-reviewed publications.