espcuae | Organizing Committee

Consultant, Anatomic Pathologist & Cytopathologist
Medical Director, e-Pathology Program
Clinical Professor of Pathology, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi
UAE

Dr. Nahal is a Staff Physician and consultant anatomic pathologist and cytopathologist in the Pathology & Laboratory Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi/National Reference Laboratory. His main interests and expertise include the interpretation of biopsy and resection specimens in the fields of soft tissue and bone tumor pathology, genitourinary pathology, cytopathology and has special interest in digital pathology. In cytopathology, his expertise include the cytologic diagnosis of thyroid nodules and endoscopic ultrasound guided fine needle aspirations of pancreatic solid and cystic tumors.

Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in 2014, Dr. Ayoub Nahal has had 12 years’ working experience in Anatomic Pathology from McGill University Health Center in Montreal, Canada. At McGill University, he also held an academic appointment of Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine where he was a regular lecturer. He specialized in Cytopathology, and in Soft tissue and bone tumor Pathology where he had a consultation service providing expert opinion on cases received from the entire province of Quebec. He holds two American Board Certifications both in Anatomic Pathology and Cytopathology. He also obtained the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine in 2020.

He received his pathology residency at St Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center of New York, followed by three fellowships, two of which obtained from Hartford Hospital, Connecticut in General Surgical Pathology and Cytopathology respectively, and a third fellowship in Oncologic Pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

At Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, he established the ePathology (digital Pathology) program, the first in the United Arab Emirates, to be used for rapid response digital pathology consultation services with the main campus at Cleveland Clinic, and to be integrated in a range of educational and laboratory applications at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

He also acts as an expert consultant in bone and soft tissue tumor pathology for various Pathology departments and laboratories in the UAE. He is an active member at the International Skeletal Society and The International Society of Bone and Soft tissue Pathology, in addition to being member at The Memorial Hospital Alumni Society, College of American Pathologists (CAP), and The Canadian Association of Pathologists. He is a reviewer for the Skeletal Radiology Journal and Cancer Cytopathology. He is also an adjunct faculty at Khalifa University School of Medicine. He has lectured at numerous meetings in Canada and currently in the UAE and has over 45 publications in peer-reviewed journals, mostly in Bone and Soft tissue tumor pathology.

Staff Pathologist
CBLPATH Inc.
USA

Dr. Rana S. Hoda is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Cytopathology by the American Board of Pathology. Her primary clinical focus is cytopathology with special expertise in fine needle aspiration, urinary and liquid based cytology. She trained in Anatomic Pathology at Cornell University Medical College-affiliated Hospitals. Subsequently, she underwent a fellowship in Oncologic Surgical Pathology at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY with several outstanding oncological pathologists including Drs. Juan Rosai and Paul Peter Rosen. The following year, she did a fellowship in Cytopathology at Montefiore Medical Center - Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY under the guidance of Dr. Leopold G. Koss, one of the pioneers of cytopathology. She served as a Lecturer of Pathology at the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Following this, she served as Assistant, Associate and Professor of Pathology, Director of Cytopathology and Director of Cytopathology Fellowship Training Program at three major academic centers including Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) at Charleston, University of Rochester and Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)-New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr. Hoda has published more than 100 scientific papers, several chapters and three text books including books on urinary cytology and liquid-based preparations. She is on the editorial board of several cytopathology journals including Diagnostic Cytopathology, Journal of American Society of Cytopathology and Cytojournal. Dr. Hoda directed annual cytopathology educational conferences at MUSC and WCMC from 2000-2016. She is active on the regional, national and international lecture circuit. She continues to lecture at various pathology meetings; including American Society of Cytopathology (ASC), United States & Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP), American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP), College of American Pathologists (CAP) and International Academy of Cytopathology; and has participated in educational conferences in several countries. Dr. Hoda is an active member of ASC, USCAP, ASCP, CAP and the New York Pathological Society.

Director, Genomics Center,
Al Jalila Children's Specialty Hospital
Associate Professor of Genetics,
Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences

Dr. Ahmad is the Director of the Genomics Center at Al Jalila Children's, and an Associate Professor of Genetics at Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences. He completed his doctoral studies in genetics at Dartmouth College, followed by a fellowship in molecular diagnostics at Dartmouth Medical School. In 2013, he joined Harvard Medical School where he completed his clinical molecular genetics fellowship and, in 2015, became board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG). Dr. Abou Tayoun is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Prior to joining Al Jalila Children's, he was a director in the Division of Genomic Diagnostics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and also an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

To support clinicians in various specialties at CHOP, Dr. Ahmad developed genomic sequencing-based diagnostic tests for a range of pediatric disorders. He also developed and published several tools and clinical assays involving next-generation sequencing and variant interpretation. Dr. Abou Tayoun serves on several international expert groups in his field. He is a co-chair of the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) Hearing Loss Expert Group, a member of the ClinGen Sequence Variant Interpretation group, and also a member of American College of Genetics and Genomics Interpreting Sequence Variants workgroup. In those capacities, Dr. Abou Tayoun is working with international experts to establish guidelines and recommendations for sequence variant interpretation in genomic diagnostic settings.

Dr. Abou Tayoun's main research interests are centered around characterizing the genomic landscape of pediatric diseases in the Middle East, and cataloguing the normal genetic variation in this population. In addition, he is one of the leaders in driving national efforts to characterize the epidemiological and genomic characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 in the UAE, and to identify host genetics factors and RNA expression profiles modulating COVID-19 disease severity.