Dr. Randall Urban, VP and Chief Research Officer, has determined that UTMB research should be prioritized into six health communities. This researcher has received the following badge(s):

Heather Stevenson-Lerner is in the Department of Pathology, Division of Surgical Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Her clinical focus includes liver, transplantation, and gastrointestinal pathology. Prior to becoming faculty at UTMB in 2014, she completed a fellowship in the Transplant Pathology Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Stevenson-Lerner leads UTMB’s Liver Diseases Diagnostic Management Team, which is popular with hepatologists, transplant coordinators, fellows, and residents. Heather is actively involved in several grant-funded clinical research projects including studies in patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Primary research interests include studying the role of the hepatic immune response, including macrophages and lymphocytes, in fibrosis and HCC development. Her laboratory has also developed a Spectral-imaging platform to characterize and quantify these populations in human formalin-fixed liver biopsy tissue. Dr. Stevenson-Lerner earned her BS from Colorado State University and worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prior to coming to UTMB for her training in the combined MD/PhD program. Her PhD training was in the department of experimental pathology under the guidance of Dr. David Walker. She completed residency training at UTMB in 2013 and is board-certified in anatomic and clinical Pathology. Dr. Stevenson-Lerner received a University of Texas Rising STARs award, is on the executive committee for medical school admissions, and received the Best Anatomic Pathology Faculty Award from UTMB’s pathology residents and fellows for the 2016-2017 academic year. She is also a recent recipient of a career development award from the Institute for Translational Sciences' KL2 (ITS Scholars) program.