Fellowships and CAP summit grants

Two separate announcements landed this week, and both pointed to the same trend: pathology departments are spending real money on teaching people how to run labs, lead teams, and argue for their field in public. UCLA said Dr. Olga Timofeeva received an Association for Academic Pathology leadership fellowship, and the University of Nebraska Medical Center said two trainees won grants to attend the 2026 College of American Pathologists leadership summit. (x.com) (unmc.edu) The University of Nebraska Medical Center named the two grant recipients on April 8, 2026: Marika Forsythe, a molecular genetic pathology fellow, and Holly Mitzel, a second-year pathology resident. Each received a $1,500 travel award from the Nebraska Association of Pathologists for the April 25-28 summit in Washington, District of Columbia. (unmc.edu) (cap.org) That summit is not a lecture series about microscope technique. The College of American Pathologists says the four-day meeting brings together leadership, practicing pathologists, and health care professionals, and the Nebraska writeup says it ends with “Hill Day,” when attendees meet members of Congress and staff to push pathology policy priorities. (unmc.edu) (cap.org) The Association for Academic Pathology fellowship works on a different part of the career ladder. Its Pathology Leadership Fellows program says it is aimed at mid-to-senior faculty members who are pursuing vice chair, director, chief, or chair roles, and the 2026-27 program fee is listed at $4,500. (apcprods.org) The fellowship is built like management training for a specialty that usually trains people first as scientists and diagnosticians. The Association for Academic Pathology says the program was launched to build skills needed for academic administration, and its 2026 annual meeting schedule shows a fellows-only workshop on July 18-19 in Boston. (apcprods.org 1) (apcprods.org 2) Dr. Timofeeva fits the kind of person that program is designed for. UCLA says she joined the faculty in 2024 as professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and associate director of the UCLA Immunogenetics Center, where she helps lead diagnostic, research, and training programs. (uclahealth.org) Her background is unusually cross-cutting for lab leadership. UCLA says she trained in biochemistry, completed postdoctoral work at the National Cancer Institute, later directed molecular pathology and co-led immunogenetics at Temple, then returned to Georgetown in 2019 before moving to UCLA, and her research centers on transplant rejection and diagnostic strategy. (uclahealth.org) Put the two announcements together and you can see the pipeline. One program sends residents and fellows to Washington to learn advocacy and professional politics, while the other trains established faculty for jobs like division chief or department chair. (unmc.edu) (apcprods.org) Pathology is a field where a lab can be both a medical service and a regulated operation, so leadership training often means learning budgets, staffing, accreditation, and policy at the same time. The College of American Pathologists describes itself as the leading organization of board-certified pathologists, and its summit pairs governance meetings with leadership programming in Washington. (cap.org 1) (cap.org 2) That is why these small award notices are more than résumé lines. A $1,500 travel grant can get a trainee into congressional offices before they finish training, and a faculty fellowship can move someone already running part of a lab toward the chair-level jobs that decide how whole departments work. (unmc.edu) (apcprods.org)