Famous professor Wayne Grody will join the 6th IMCA as a plenary speaker  

Wayne W. Grody, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor in the Departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, and Human Genetics, and the Institute for Society and Genetics, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA will join the 6^th IMCA as a plenary speaker.

He is the director of the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratories and the Clinical Genomics Center within the UCLA Health, one of the first such facilities in the country to offer DNA-based tests for diagnosis of a wide variety of genetic, infectious, and neoplastic diseases, as well as bone marrow engraftment, patient specimen identification and paternity testing by DNA fingerprinting, and clinical genomic DNA sequencing for undiagnosed disorders.  He is also an attending physician in the Department of Pediatrics, specializing in the care of patients with or at risk for genetic disorders (with a special interest in familial Mediterranean fever, among others), and director of the UCLA Intercampus Medical Genetics Training Program. 

In addition, he is heavily involved in basic molecular genetics research involving regulation of gene expression of arginase and related enzymes in hereditary arginase deficiency and various cancers, population molecular genetic screening, and genomic approaches to hereditary disease pathogenesis.  He has been one of the primary developers of quality assurance and ethical guidelines for DNA-based genetic testing for many governmental and professional agencies including the FDA, AMA, CAP, ACMG, ASHG, NCCLS/CLSI, CDC, AMP, VA, ACGME, and the NIH-DOE Human Genome Project (ELSI program). 

He served as a member of the NIH-DOE Task Force on Genetic Testing and was the working group chair for development of national guidelines for cystic fibrosis and factor V-Leiden mutation screening. He served for five years as founding chair of the Advisory Committee on Genomic Medicine for the entire Veterans of America healthcare system and is Past President of the American College of Medical Genetics. He was the expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union in the historic Supreme Court case that invalidated patenting of human genes. 

Recent awards include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the College of American Pathologists, the Ward Burdick Award for Distinguished Service from the American Society for Clinical Pathology, the Bowes Award Lectureship at Harvard Medical School, the Roscher Endowed Lectureship of the International College of Surgeons, the Leadership Award from the Association for Molecular Pathology, the UCLA Clinical Teaching Award, and election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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