By Christina Crowe
After nearly 20 years in the UAB Department of Pathology, Shi Wei, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Anatomic Pathology and section head, breast pathology, will take on a new role as the Barbara F. Atkinson Endowed Professor and Director of Translational Research in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. His last day at UAB Pathology is December 10, when he will assume an adjunct faculty role in the department.
Faculty, trainees and staff gathered to celebrate colleague Dr. Shi WeiWei started his tenure at UAB as a resident in Pathology in 2004, mentored by Gene Siegal, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice Chair and Robert M. Mowry Endowed Professor, UAB Pathology. He stayed on at UAB as a fellow, then as an instructor in 2009. He was promoted from assistant to associate professor in 2013, and then again in 2016 to full professor. In 2015, Wei was named section head for Surgical Pathology, and until recently has served as associate division director, Anatomic Pathology.
“It is with mixed feelings that I am leaving UAB Pathology,” Wei says. “I’ve enjoyed being here at UAB, which is a very collegial working place; that’s why I stayed here for more than 12 years on faculty. It’s not an easy decision to make to leave UAB.”
His clinical service coverage focuses mostly on breast, bone and soft tissue pathology. Dr. Wei
served as the liaison for the Community Pathology Practic
Dr. Shi Wei outside the Surgical Pathology conference roome Program throughout most of his career at UAB. From 2013 to 2017, he also served as co-director of the UAB Pathology Core Research Laboratory.
Teaching is a passion of his, having actively taught residents throughout his tenure in the department. Wei twice won the Leonard H. Robinson Award for Excellence in Resident Education from resident nominations. He served as faculty mentor for 18 Adams Grant award recipients. Dr. Wei is the director of the UAB Breast/Gynecologic Pathology Fellowship Program and from 2015 to 2020 was Director of the UAB Surgical Pathology Fellowship Program. He also serves as a mentor for junior faculty in the department.
“Dr. Wei has had a major impact on a decade-plus of UAB residents and fellows, both through his training of them at the microscope and gross bench, but also in mentoring them in the generation of new knowledge adding substantially to the peer-reviewed literature in diagnostic pathology,” Siegal says.
Prior to choosing pathology as a medical specialty, Dr. Wei earned his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Okayama University School of Medicine in Japan. He earned his medical degree in China.
Dr. Wei is a researcher with a focus on breast, musculoskeletal and genitourinary pathology.
This includes immunohistochemistry, discovery and evaluation of biomarkers in breast cancer and other malignancies, evaluation of prognostic factors in breast cancer and malignant bone tumors, and tumor bone metastasis. He is a senior scientist in the Experiental Therapeutics Program of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and a scientist in the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis Musculoskeletal, Bone and Autoimmunity Center. In 2021 he was elected as an uncontested Executive Committee Member-at Large of the International Skeletal Society, and to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine.
Dr. Wei with Dr. Cristina Magi-Galluzzi, AP Division DirectorHe is editor-in-chief of Human Pathology: Case Reports, and on the editorial board of Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Journal of Clinical and Translational Pathology, and chief editor, Breast Pathology Section, Digital Anatomic Pathology Academy. In addition, Wei serves as ad hoc reviewer for dozens of medical journals. He has published around 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 140 of which were during his time at UAB.
Dr. Wei’s impact as a clinical faculty member, colleague, educator, mentor and expert in the field are notable.
“I truly enjoyed and treasured working shoulder-to-shoulder with Dr. Wei for the last three years,” says Cristina Magi-Galluzzi, M.D., Ph.D., Division Director, Anatomic Pathology. “In addition to being a great pathologist and a brilliant scientist, Dr. Wei is a wonderful colleague, generous with his time and knowledge, collegial, supportive, thoughtful and welcoming.”