Faculty Educator of the Month: December 2008
Dr. Aysegul A. Sahin
Dr. Aysegul A. Sahin, Director of the Surgical Pathology and Breast Pathology Fellowship Programs, Director of the Breast Tumor Bank, Head of the Breast Pathology Section, and Professor in the Department of Pathology, has been named the December 2008 Faculty Educator of the Month.
As Director of the Surgical Pathology and Breast Pathology fellowship programs, Dr. Sahin is instrumental in organization of the programs and training fellows in multiple facets of pathology. Fellows in these programs have the opportunity to obtain broad and advanced training in oncologic surgical pathology and breast pathology. These fellowship programs allow trainees to enhance their diagnostic skills, increase their confidence in handling a wide variety of complex pathology cases, and develop subspecialty expertise. These fellowships have also provided unique opportunities for fellows to interact with surgeons, radiologists, and medical oncologists.
Dr. Sahin closely supervises all of the surgical pathology fellows during all rotations to assure that they obtain optimal exposure to all surgical pathology cases. In addition to clinical rotations, surgical pathology fellows are involved in translational research projects with different faculty members. Dr. Sahin encourages the fellows to reach their full potential by pairing them with ongoing research projects that they complete during the fellowship year.
Dr. Sahin has made further educational contributions at M. D. Anderson by directly supervising Breast Pathology fellows. The M. D. Anderson Breast Pathology Fellowship Program is the only Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited breast pathology fellowship program in the country and has the goal of training academic breast pathologists.
In addition, Dr. Sahin directly supervises 10-12 rotating residents at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, about 6 rotating residents at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and 10-12 observers from different institutions in the United States and/or other countries each year. Dr. Sahin has also served on Thesis Advisory Committees for 4 students at The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston and supervised 19 visitors and observers at M. D. Anderson.
Dr. Sahin received her M.D. degree from the University of Ankara School of Medicine in Ankara, Turkey, in 1980. She then completed a residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, OR, in 1986, a fellowship in Surgical Pathology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, IA, in 1987, and a fellowship in Pathology at M. D. Anderson in 1988.
After completing her fellowship at M. D. Anderson, Dr. Sahin joined the M. D. Anderson faculty as a Faculty Associate in the Department of Pathology and has since risen to the rank of full Professor. She was named Director of the Surgical Pathology Fellowship Program in 1997, Director of the Breast Tumor Bank and Head of the Breast Pathology Section in 1999, and Director of the Breast Pathology Fellowship Program in 2000.
Over the past several years, Dr. Sahin has been a member of several institutional committees at M. D. Anderson. These include her current duties as a member of the Graduate Medical Education Committee (for which she is the President for 2007-2009), Graduate Medical Education Executive Committee, Faculty Senate, and Executive Committee of the Department of Pathology. She is also a member of the Breast Cancer Research Steering Committee, Breast Cancer Serum Bank Committee, Radiation Oncology Chair Search Committee, and Thoracic Surgery Chair Search Committee.
Over her career at M. D. Anderson, Dr. Sahin has been a principal investigator, co-principal investigator, or collaborator for 14 grant-funded research projects. In addition, she has been a grant reviewer on study sections for the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Army Medical Research on Breast Cancer, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
During her time at M. D. Anderson, Dr. Sahin has authored more than 240 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, 10 book chapters, 2 teaching aids, and numerous abstracts on topics such as histopathologic evaluation of prognostic and predictive markers of breast carcinogenesis, classification and the biologic behavior of premalignant lesions, evaluation of sentinel lymph nodes and biomarkers predicting neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and targeted therapies for breast cancer.