The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce the promotion and tenure of eight of our esteemed faculty colleagues for 2025, effective October 1, 2025.
Liyun Cao, MBBS, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Cao earned her medical degree from Wuhan University School of Medicine and practiced laboratory medicine at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China, for five years before coming to the United States. She earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University School of Medicine and completed a fellowship in clinical chemistry at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she became board certified by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry.
Cao joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2018 as an instructor in the Division of Laboratory Medicine. In 2021, Cao was promoted to assistant professor. She won both a UAB Faculty Development Grant and a Department of Pathology Lab Medicine Pilot Grant in 2024. Cao serves as section head of clinical chemistry and is CLIA director of the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (RNICU) Laboratory, the Critical Care Transport Laboratory and the Kirklin Clinic Point-of-Care Testing.
Sixto M. Leal, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
Award of tenure
Leal earned both his Ph.D. in 2012 and his medical degree in 2014 from Case Western Reserve University. He completed his residency in clinical pathology in 2017 at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and his fellowship in clinical microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in 2018.
Leal joined the department in 2018 and shortly after found himself tackling the challenge of COVID-19 testing. In 2020, Leal received the UAB Faculty Innovator of the Year award. In 2021, he received the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Dean’s Excellence Award for service. In 2022, Leal was named the inaugural scientific director of the Southeastern Biosafety Lab – one of the few biosafety level 3 Regional Biocontainment Laboratories build in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Leal was named Director of the Division of Laboratory Medicine in 2024 after having served as associate division director in 2022. In 2025, he was named Jay M. McDonald Endowed Professor in Experimental Pathology.
Steve Lim, Ph.D.
Professor
Lim earned his Ph.D. in cell biology from UAB in 2003. He completed postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute’s Department of Immunology and the University of California San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center where he became an assistant project scientist before joining the University of South Alabama’s faculty as assistant professor in 2012. He became an associate professor in 2019.
Lim joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2022 as an associate professor in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology. His research focuses on vascular and cancer biology. In 2023, Lim was appointed as a standing member to serve on the Atherosclerosis and Vascular Inflammation Study Section and was awarded an O’Neal Invests Award for his project on triple negative breast cancer.
Jose Lima, M.D.
Associate Professor
Lima earned his medical degree from Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1985, before completing several years of training at UAB as a research associate, resident and transfusion medicine fellow. Lima joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2020 from the American Red Cross Blood Services where he served as medical director since 2010. He has a decade of experience teaching as an adjunct assistant professor at Emory University in the Department of Pathology.
Lima is board certified in both clinical pathology and blood banking/transfusion medicine and his research interests include focus on immunotherapy of infectious disease and gene transfer therapy of neoplasia. He served as section head of clinical chemistry from 2021 to 2024. Lima currently serves as section head of transfusion medicine.
Girish Melkani, Ph.D.
Professor with tenure
Melkani earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2001 through a joint program between the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, and Kumaun University in Nainital, India. He joined the UAB Department of Pathology’s Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology in 2020 as an associate professor. Melkani joined UAB from San Diego State University, where he completed his postdoctoral training and served as assistant and associate professor.
Melkani’s research investigates how circadian rhythm disruptions contribute to cardiometabolic, muscular, and sleep disorders, hallmarks of numerous genetic, metabolic and aging-related diseases. Supported by a strong record of extramural funding, his work has been published in journals including Science, Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, Aging Cell, eLife, Human Molecular Genetics and PLoS Genetics. Melkani has been featured multiple times as a UAB Heersink School of Medicine Featured Discovery.
Diana Morlote, M.D.
Associate Professor
Morlote earned her medical degree from Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University before completing anatomic and clinical pathology residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, Florida, in 2017. She joined the UAB Department of Pathology as a molecular genetic pathology fellow. Upon completion of one fellowship, Morlote began her second in hematopathology at UAB. In 2019, she joined the department as an assistant professor.
Morlote is board certified in molecular genetic pathology and hematopathology. Her research interests focus on the molecular characterization of hematologic neoplasms and their diagnostic and prognostic implications. She serves as director of the hematopathology fellowship program and leads the hematopathology resident rotation. She is chair of the Critical Values Committee and one of the module directors for the Hematology-Oncology Module at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. In addition, she serves as director of two UAB Outreach Service Labs in the McDonald Clinic and Urgent Care.
Nirupama Singh, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Singh earned her Ph.D. in cellular and microbial biology from the Catholic University of America’s Department of Biology in Washington, DC. She completed a clinical pathology residency in 2004 at the Medical College Baroda, The M.S. University, Baroda, Gujarat, India, where she completed her medical degree.
Singh completed her residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Brookwood Baptist Health in Birmingham, where she served as chief resident. She joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2018 as a molecular/genetic pathology fellow before completing a second fellowship in transfusion medicine. Singh joined the faculty as assistant professor in the Division of Laboratory Medicine in 2020. She is board certified in blood banking/transfusion medicine, apheresis and molecular genetic pathology. Singh currently serves as medical director of apheresis collection.
Adam Wende, Ph.D.
Professor
Wende earned his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2006 before serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and later as a postdoctoral research associate. In 2012, Wende served as research instructor at the University of Utah’s Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes.
Wende joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2013 as an assistant professor in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology. He was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and was awarded tenure in 2020. Wende received the 2018 Dean’s Excellence Award in Research for Junior Faculty and the Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship in 2023. His research focuses on deciphering molecular pathways mediating metabolic changes that accompany diabetes, hypertension and exercise training.