Dr. Gene SiegalGene Siegal, M.D., Ph.D., a professor emeritus in the Division of Anatomic Pathology, was recently named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow for 2025. This lifetime honor recognizes members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues. Siegal has been elected to the Section of Medical Sciences.
Siegal, who was the inaugural Robert W. Mowry Endowed Professor and Executive Vice Chair, retired on December 31, 2024, after 34 years of service in the UAB Department of Pathology. He was honored with a symposium marking his extraordinary career at UAB pathology. On June 6, 2025, Siegal was named professor emeritus by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees.
Siegal earned his medical degree in 1974 from the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. While a pathology resident at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, he pursued a Ph.D. in experimental pathology from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, awarded in 1979, and followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute. Siegal undertook a fellowship in surgical pathology at the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology under the direction of renowned pathologist, Dr. Juan Rosai.
In 1982, Siegal joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor and tenured in 1988. While there, he earned a certificate in hospital management from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business Administration in Chapel Hill. In 1990, he was recruited to UAB as division director of Anatomic Pathology and professor in the UAB Department of Pathology, a position he held for a quarter of a century. Siegal simultaneously served as a senior scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and as a professor in both the Departments of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology and Surgery since 1991. In 1995, he began serving as a senior scientist in the Comprehensive Center for Healthy Aging.
Siegal served as both a senior scientist and founding member of the Cell Adhesion and Matrix Research Center, the Center for Metabolic Bone Disease, the Gene Therapy Center, the BioMatrix Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Center and the Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone and Autoimmunity Center. In addition to these roles, he served as senior scientist in the Nephrology Research and Training Center and the Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering.
In 2008, Siegal was named the inaugural Robert W. Mowry Endowed Professor of Pathology and the Executive Vice Chair for the Department of Pathology. Siegal has served as interim chair of the department twice over the course of his career at UAB and more than 3 years as interim chair of the UAB Department of Genetics. He has been an attending pathologist at UAB and its affiliate hospitals for his entire career and has held UAB’s CLIA license as its medical director of hospital laboratories. The UAB Board of Trustees honored Siegal by naming him a Distinguished Professor in 2021, the only pathologist at UAB having received this honor.
The mission of AAAS is to advance science, engineering and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. AAAS Fellows are distinguished individuals who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines. In a tradition stretching back to 1874, honorees are elected annually by the AAAS Council. Fellows have included Thomas Edison, W.E.B DuBois, Maria Mitchell, Steven Chu, Ellen Ochoa and Irwin M. Jacobs.