The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce the promotion and tenure of seven of our esteemed faculty colleagues for 2026, effective October 1, 2026.
Daniel S. Atherton, M.D.
Professor
Atherton earned his medical degree from Louisiana State University in Shreveport in 2008. He completed his anatomical and clinical pathology residency at Baptist Health System in 2012, followed by a surgical pathology fellowship at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2013, and a forensic pathology fellowship at UAB in 2014. Atherton joined the department in 2014 as an assistant professor in the Division of Anatomic Pathology and moved to the Division of Forensic Pathology in 2016. He was promoted to associate professor in 2019 and awarded tenure in 2023.
Atherton developed WoundX, a software tool for gunshot wound classification that provides quality assurance in catching human error during the identification process in 2023. He is an elected member on the professional advisory board for the Epilepsy Foundation, and researches the importance of accurate death certification, especially in Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy.
Rati Chkheidze, M.D.
Associate Professor
Chkheidze joined the UAB Department of Pathology in 2020 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he completed a neuropathology fellowship following his anatomic and clinical pathology residency. Originally from the country of Georgia, he graduated from Tbilisi State Medical University in 2007. Before joining the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, he worked as a senior visiting scientist in the Department of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics until 2014. His research interests focus on image analysis and machine learning applications in neurodegenerative and tumor neuropathology, and brain banking.
Chkheidze has been instrumental in the launch of the Department of Pathology’s digital efforts. He serves as medical director of both digital pathology and immunohistochemistry, and as neuropathology core leader at the UAB Alzheimer's Disease Center, a core he established in 2020. Chkheidze has served as neuropathology fellowship program director since 2023. In 2025, he served for four months as interim director of the Division of Neuropathology.
Valeria Dal Zotto, M.D.
Associate Professor
Dal Zotto joined the newly formed UAB Division of Women’s Health in 2022 as an assistant professor. She joined UAB from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where she served as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Dal Zotto received her medical degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Medicas in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1995. She completed her residency in anatomic pathology in Hospital de Clinicas’ Department of Pathology in 1999 before completing a surgical pathology fellowship at Sanatorio Mater Dei, Buenos Aires. In 2017, she completed a second residency in combined anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of South Alabama’s College of Medicine and a second fellowship in surgical pathology at the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Pathology.
Before joining East Carolina University, Dal Zotto served as an assistant professor at the University of South Alabama Medical Center. She previously served as staff pathologist and director of the service of pathology in Hospital Evangelico, Siguatepeque, Comayagua, Honduras, from 2007-2010.
Huma Fatima, M.D.
Professor
Fatima earned her medical degree from Rawalpindi Medical College in Pakistan in 1997. She completed her residency at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan in 2007 before completing a fellowship in renal pathology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in 2011. Fatima joined the department in 2011 as an assistant professor in the Division of Anatomic Pathology. In 2019, she was promoted to associate professor and awarded tenure in 2020.
Fatima is board certified in both anatomic/clinical pathology and cytopathology, and her research interests focus on exploring the pathogenesis of various primary glomerular diseases. She currently serves as the section head of renal pathology.
Sixto M. Leal Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
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.
Rance Chadwick Siniard, M.D.
Associate Professor
Siniard joined the Department of Pathology in 2015 when he trained as a transfusion medicine fellow. Upon completion of two fellowships at UAB, Siniard joined the department as faculty in 2020. He began serving as Associate Program Director for Clinical Pathology in 2021. Later in the year, he was awarded the Shu T. Huang Award for Excellence. In 2024, Siniard began serving as associate program director for the department’s residency program. In 2025, he began serving as program director and held the role until 2026.
Dario Vitturi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Vitturi earned his Ph.D. at UAB in the Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate program. Upon completion of his graduate studies, Vitturi joined the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, first as a postdoctoral associate, and then as a faculty member. Vitturi returned to UAB as an assistant professor in 2022.
His research interests include understanding the impact of redox-active metabolites on cellular homeostasis under physiological and pathological conditions, with emphasis on the formation, metabolism and biological actions of endogenous electrophiles. In 2026, he was named a pilot grant awardee by the UAB Diabetes Research Center for his study on Kyn-CKA as a novel driver for hepatic glucose metabolism dysregulation in obesity and renal disease.