AACC Elects Clinical Director at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas as 2016 President

WASHINGTON – AACC is pleased to announce that Patricia M. Jones, PhD, DABCC, FACB, has been elected to serve on the AACC Board as president-elect beginning in January 2015, followed by successive terms as the association’s 67th president in 2016 and past president in 2017. The AACC membership also elected two new members to the association’s Board of Directors and two new members to the Nominating Committee who will take office at the start of next year.

“I consider it the highest honor to be chosen as president-elect of AACC,” said Dr. Jones. “I would not be the director of a chemistry lab and a professor of pathology without the connections I have made and the knowledge I have gained through AACC membership. Thus, I embrace the chance to help AACC continue to adapt to the dynamic healthcare field and to take on an ever more visible role in it, and to assist AACC members in becoming strong and essential partners on healthcare teams.”

Dr. Jones is clinical director of the chemistry and metabolic disease labs at Children’s Medical Center and a professor of pathology at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. An active member of AACC since 1986, she is currently serving as 2014 president of AACC’s academy, the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry, as secretary of AACC’s Therapeutic Drug Monitoring/Toxicology Division, and as chair of AACC’s Pediatric Reference Range Committee. She is also on the faculties of two different fellowship programs for clinical chemistry and pediatric pathology, respectively, at UT Southwestern. Her research interests lie in the field of inborn errors of metabolism, especially disorders of fatty acid metabolism.

Newly Elected AACC Board Members

Carmen J. Wiley, PhD, DABCC, FACB, and Paul J. Jannetto, PhD, DABCC, FACB, will serve 3-year terms as members of AACC’s Board of Directors.

Dr. Wiley is the scientific director at PAML in Spokane, Washington, and oversees all aspects of PAML’s research and development program, while also working with a team to evaluate and deploy new tests, technologies, and instrumentation. Her involvement with AACC includes a term as chair of the 2014 AACC Annual Meeting Organizing Committee. Additionally, she is a member of the editorial board for Lab Tests Online and the Pacific Northwest Section’s delegate in AACC’s House of Delegates.

Dr. Jannetto is a senior associate consultant at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where he serves as the co-director for both the toxicology and drug monitoring laboratory and the metals laboratory. He is also a member of the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology. His clinical and scientific interests include clinical chemistry/toxicology, forensic toxicology, therapeutic drug monitoring, and laboratory management.

Newly Elected Members of AACC’s Nominating Committee

Susan Evans, PhD, FACB, and Deborah French, PhD, DABCC, FACB, will serve 2-year terms on AACC’s Nominating Committee, which is responsible for choosing future candidates for both the Nominating Committee and the AACC Board.

Dr. Evans previously held the offices of AACC president in 2003 and AACC secretary from 2000–2002, and is now chair of the AACC Awards Committee and the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry Membership Committee. She has more than 30 years of experience in diagnostics and health technology companies, including Dade Behring, now part of Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, and Beckman Coulter, with a focus on growth through innovation and technology development. Recently, she established an independent consulting practice, BioDecisions Consulting, to focus on strategy and assessment of growth opportunities.

Dr. French is the assistant director of chemistry and director of mass spectrometry at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Clinical Laboratories, and also holds a faculty appointment as assistant clinical professor in the department of laboratory medicine at UCSF. Since joining AACC in 2007, she has assumed several leadership roles in AACC’s Northern California section, and is also a member of the subcommittee for SYCL360, a podcast designed for AACC’s Society for Young Clinical Laboratorians. Additionally, Dr. French is a contributor and secretary for the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute C62 Document Development Committee. Her interests include implementation and standardization of mass spectrometry in the clinical laboratory, endocrinology, pharmacogenomics, toxicology, and therapeutic drug monitoring.

About AACC

Dedicated to achieving better health through laboratory medicine, AACC brings together more than 50,000 clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and business leaders from around the world focused on clinical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, mass spectrometry, translational medicine, lab management, and other areas of breaking laboratory science. Since 1948, AACC has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing programs that advance scientific collaboration, knowledge, expertise, and innovation. For more information, visit www.myadlm.org.