2010 Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
Jay M. McDonald, PhD
Dr. McDonald is a professor in the department of pathology and director of the Center for Metabolic Bone Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He chaired the department of pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center and was chief pathologist at the University of Alabama Hospital from 1990–2008. He built a leading department of pathology at the University of Alabama, which ranked sixth in annual National Institutes of Health funding. Dr. McDonald has received many honors, including the Mary Jane Krugal Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Association, the Evans Award from the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists, and a distinguished service award from the American Society for Clinical Pathology. He has served as president of the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists, is on the editorial boards of three scientific journals, and was editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Pathology. He has made major contributions to education and research in clinical pathology and clinical chemistry. Dr. McDonald’s basic research focused for almost 20 years on signal transduction in insulin action; he led one of the first groups to demonstrate active calcium homeostatic mechanisms in the plasma membrane, mitochondria, and endoplasmic reticulum of non-muscle cells. For the past 15 years, his research has shifted to bone disease, cancer pathogenesis, and AIDS pathogenesis, focusing primarily on the role of calcium and calmodulin as intracellular signal transducers. He has published more than 200 scientific manuscripts.