In July 2023, we changed our name from AACC (short for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry) to the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM). The following page was written prior to this rebranding and contains mentions of the association’s old name. It may contain other out-of-date information as well.
2001 Outstanding Contributions in Education
Lawrence M. Silverman, PhD, DABCC, DABMG, is Director of the Division of Molecular Pathology as well as Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, NC. In addition, he is Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory and Associate Director of the Clinical Chemistry Laboratories at the University of North Carolina Hospitals and Director of the American Board of Medical Genetics (ABMG) postdoctoral training program in Clinical Molecular Genetics. He received his BA in Chemistry from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA. After 2 years in the United States Army, he received his PhD in Physiological Chemistry followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Clinical Chemistry, both under Hanns-Dieter Gruemer, MD, at the Ohio State University. After serving as Clinical Chemist at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan in Los Angeles, where he was also Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Dr. Silverman moved to Chapel Hill.
Dr. Silverman has been active in the Ohio Valley, Southern California, and North Carolina sections of AACC and has served in numerous capacities, including councilor, Secretary-Treasurer, as a member of the nominating committee, and Chair. He was instrumental in establishing the AACC Division of Molecular Pathology in 1989. He served on the Board of Editors for Clinical Chemistry from 1990 to 1999, the last 5 years as Reviews Co-Editor; the Board of Editors for the Yearbook of Pathology and Clinical Pathology (1986–1991); and is currently on the Board of Editors for Clinica Chimica Acta and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Strategies for Clinical Chemistry. He has served as Vice-President and Chair of Program Evaluations for the Commission on Accreditation in Clinical Chemistry (ComACC) since 1989, as Vice-President and Chair, Credentials Committee of the ABCC since 1996, and is currently Chair of the Molecular Diagnostics Exam committee. He was Co-Chair of the Beckman Symposium on Nucleic Acids (1989) and Co-Chair of Symposia for the AACC National Meeting in 1991. He currently serves on the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC), which provides scientific and technical advice to the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Director of the CDC, and is Chair of the Working Group on Molecular Genetic Testing. He also serves as a consultant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Molecular and Clinical Genetics Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee and is a member of the FDA Professional Roundtable on Genetic Testing. Among the awards Dr. Silverman has received are (a) the Phil Blatt Award for pathology resident teaching at the University of North Carolina, (b) the ISCABER Research Award from Ohio State University for graduate research, (c) the Miriam Reiner Award from the Capital Section of AACC for contributions to the field of clinical chemistry, and (d) the inaugural AACC Young Investigator Award.
In addition to training 12 clinical molecular genetic fellows as director of the ABMG training program, Dr. Silverman has had a major role in training 14 fellows during his 15-year tenure as director and co-director of the clinical chemistry postdoctoral fellowship program at the University of North Carolina. Four fellows have been recipients of the AACC Young Investigator Award. Dr. Silverman’s research has focused on basic and clinical aspects of molecular genetics, particularly cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and hereditary breast/ovarian cancer. He has been Principal Investigator on 13 research grants focused on these disorders. He has authored 91 original scientific papers, more than 100 abstracts, 27 book chapters, and coedited, with Ruth Heim, Molecular Pathology: Approaches to Diagnosing Human Disease in the Clinical Laboratory, published in 1994. His proudest accomplishment is that his coauthors and collaborators on these endeavors have primarily been fellows and graduate students.
1976 Outstanding Scientific Achievements by a Young Investigator
For work done in his laboratory at Ohio State University, Dr. Lawrence Silverman, Ph.D. received the first Young Investigator Award. Lawrence M. Silverman, was co-author of Sarcolemmal Membrane Changes Related to Enzyme Release in the Imipramine/Serotonin Experimental Animal Model, which was the basis for the Young Investigator Award (Sponsored by Hycel Inc.), given at the 28th National Meeting, AACC, Houston, Texas, August 1976.