SPP Annual Fall Meeting 2026

Dr. Nilsa C. Ramirez is a pathologist with subspecialty training in gynecological pathology and expertise in perinatal and obstetrical pathology as well as in biobanking in the context of adult and pediatric cancer clinical trials. She is a member of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the Director of the NCH Biopathology Center (BPC), and the Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Pediatric Pathology. At the BPC she oversees the collection, processing, banking, and distribution of biospecimens while ensuring full regulatory compliance across all operations. At The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine she is a Professor of Clinical Pathology and an active member of the Translational Therapeutics Program of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center. Currently, she is Principal Investigator (PI) of numerous grants, including the Pediatric Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, and contact PI of the Children’s Oncology Group and SWOG Biospecimen Banks. Since 2014 she has been the convenor of the Working Group 2 – Biobanks and Bioresources of the US Technical Advisory Group to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 276/Biotechnology. She is the National Commissioner of the College of American Pathologists Biorepository Accreditation Program (CAP BAP) and in 2019 received a CAP Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to pathology and her tireless efforts to establish the BAP.

Christopher Sande is a pediatric pathologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where he practices general surgical and autopsy pathology with a subspecialty focus on soft tissue tumors. He currently serves as Director of Digital Pathology at Seattle Children’s Hospital and has a dual appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. He is dedicated to educating the pathology community about pediatric diseases, and his research interests lie in the biology of cancer and tumor predisposition syndromes, including telomere biology disorders.

Born and raised in Saskatchewan.Graduated with an MD from University of Saskatchewan in 1967.Trained in Radiology at Cornell Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital.Trained in Pathology at Boston Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. My major interests have included Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Pediatric Tumors, and Vascular Anomalies. Most of my career has been at Boston Children’s Hospital (50 years) and I am retiring July 1, 2026 but will continue working on projects and manuscripts.

I am a pediatric pathologist practicing mainly at Boston Children’s Hospital. My academic appointment is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. I practice surgical pathology, postmortem examination, cytopathology, and consultative diagnostic services. I am Director of Pulmonary Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital, and I am active in the hospital’s Pulmonary Genetics Program. I am also the pediatric pathologist who reviews cases of sudden death for Boston Children’s Hospital’s Robert’s Program, a multidisciplinary program dedicated to clinical service and research of sudden infant death syndrome and sudden unexplained death in pediatrics. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, I work on the lung pathology service. In addition to various committee service within my institution, I also currently serve on the Pediatric Pathology Test Development and Advisory Committee of the American Board of Pathology. I am proud to count myself as a past president of the Society for Pediatric Pathology.

Alyaa Al-Ibraheemi, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from University of Baghdad, Faculty of Medicine in Iraq. In 2008, she relocated to the United States. After completing her training in Anatomical and Clinical pathology at the University of Texas in Houston, she joined Boston Children’s Hospital for a pediatric pathology fellowship and then pursued further subspecialty training in bone and soft tissue pathology at the Mayo Clinic under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Folpe. She returned to Boston Children’s Hospital as a staff pathologist, where she provides clinical care, and teaching to medical students, residents and fellows. Currently, she is the director of surgical pathology, director of patient safety and quality assurance, and a member of Boston Children’s Hospital Vascular Anomaly Center.Dr. Al-Ibraheemi’s clinical interest and expertise focus on the diagnosis and clinical and translational research of pediatric mesenchymal tumors. She is an active member of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) and the Society for Pediatric Pathology (SPP). She is a member of SPPRITEs (Sarcoma Pediatric Pathology Research Interests) and the Children’s Oncology Group Young Investigator Program under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Black. Her research interests encompass the study of genomic landscapes of pediatric solid tumors including malignant nerve sheath tumors, fibroblastic tumors, and vascular tumors/anomalies. She is a strong collaborator: many of her projects represent the efforts of cross-departmental and multi-institutional teams. Dr. Al-Ibraheemi has authored multiple peer reviewed manuscripts and book chapters including the WHO 5th edition Classification of Tumors for Bone and Soft Tissue Tumours and the WHO Classification of Paediatric Tumours.

Roshini Sarah Abraham received her PhD in 1996 and completed fellowships at the Mayo Clinic Rochester from 1996-2002. She served on the faculty at the Mayo Clinic from 2002-2018. Since September 2018, she has been on the faculty at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) in the Dept. of Pathology/Laboratory Medicine, Columbus, Ohio as Associate Chief of Academic Affairs and Founding Director of the Diagnostic Immunology Laboratory. She is a Professor of Clinical Pathology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and Director of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation for Primary Immunodeficiencies Diagnostic and Research Center at NCH. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Medical Laboratory Immunology (D[ABMLI]) and a fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (FAAAAI) and a fellow of the Clinical Immunology Society (FCIS). She is a Past President of the Clinical Immunology Society (2017-2019). She received the 2019 Carl Joliff Award for Lifetime Achievement in Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology from the Association for Diagnostic and Laboratory Medicine (ADLM) and the 2021 CIS Distinguished Service Award. She has published over 300 research papers, reviews, book chapters and abstracts and has mentored over 100 trainees at different stages of career development.

Is Director of Laboratory Informatics & Data Analytics and Assistant Director Clinical Chemistry at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor – Clinical, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University. In this role, he oversees the laboratory information system and the data analytics team and in chemistry, he oversees biochemical genetics and toxic metals laboratories.Dr. Bunch has implemented several improvements to the laboratory through informatics including implementation of autoverification in Chemistry and Hematology Sections and deployment of a containerized application pipeline. His informatics goal is to create a model laboratory informatics service.He has also worked to update the toxic metals and biochemical genetics laboratories by streamlining the data travel within the system and implementing new instruments.

Lamé Balikani MD, MPH, is originally from Botswana in Southern Africa. She received her MD from St. George’s University, School of Medicine; she completed the first two years of her MD in Grenada, West Indies (Caribbean) and clinical rotations at various National Health Service (NHS) Hospitals in England, United Kingdom (Poole, London and Watford). She completed her residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh PA. Her fellowship training includes a Cytopathology Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland OH and a Pediatric Pathology Fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Her clinical interests include liver pathology, thyroid cytology, salivary gland cytology and fine needle aspiration (FNA) including pathologist performed FNA. Research interest include liver pathology and thyroid pathology.

Biography Coming Soon

Dr. Pua Hopson is a Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic Children’s Hospital in Rochester, MN. She serves as the director of the Pediatric EoE Multispecialty Clinic and the Pediatric Endoscopy Practice. Beyond her clinical roles, she is actively involved in the Pediatric GI Fellowship and Pediatric Residency training programs, where she enjoys sharing her knowledge and expertise with trainees.Dr. Hopson is a dedicated researcher, focusing on aerodigestive and esophageal disorders, particularly EoE and GERD. Her current research endeavors aim to identify biomarkers for EoE and develop artificial intelligence (AI) models to recognize and quantify histologic features of EoE on esophageal biopsy samples.

Biography Coming Soon

David Ng, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah and serves as Senior Medical Director of Applied Artificial Intelligence and Hematologic Flow Cytometry at ARUP Laboratories. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois–Chicago. He completed residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology at Dartmouth and fellowship training in hematopathology at the University of Washington.Dr. Ng is a practicing hematopathologist with clinical sign‑out responsibilities in flow cytometry, next‑generation sequencing, and morphologic evaluation. He directs the Hematologic Flow Cytometry Laboratory at ARUP Laboratories, a large national reference laboratory, where his work focuses on the development and implementation of novel spectral flow cytometry panels for diagnostic testing and measurable residual disease (MRD) assessment, integrating bioinformatics and machine learning methodologies.In addition to his clinical and academic roles, Dr. Ng leads a multidisciplinary Applied Artificial Intelligence group composed of software engineers, bioinformaticians, data scientists, and physician leaders focused on the development and operationalization of artificial intelligence tools for clinical laboratory medicine. His professional interests include machine learning applications in clinical flow cytometry and the clinical translation of spectral flow cytometry for diagnostic and MRD testing.

Dr. Anil Parwani is a Professor of Pathology and Biomedical Informatics at The Ohio State University. He serves as the Donald A. Senhauser Chair of the Department of Pathology and the Chief of Pathology Services for the Health System. Dr. Parwani has expertise in surgical pathology, pathology informatics, whole slide imaging, telepathology, image analysis, artificial intelligence, and lab automation. Dr Parwani has authored over four hundred peer-reviewed articles in major scientific journals and several books and book chapters. Dr. Parwani has served on the board of directors, education committee and abstract committee for USCAP and was the president of digital pathology association. He has also served on several committees including the AI Committee for the CAP. Dr. Parwani is the Editor-in-chief of Diagnostic Pathology and Co-editor of the Journal of Pathology Informatics.

Dr. Rider serves as a Professor in the Department of Health Systems & Implementation Science at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke Virginia. He runs CHILI, the computational human immunology lab and innovation hub, which focuses on advancing epidemiologic and predictive analyses to inform primary immune disease patient outcomes and biological discovery. Additionally, he is a Clinical Immunologist at Carilion Clinic and Research Informaticist at Virginia Tech. Dr. Rider is board-certified in Allergy-Immunology and Clinical Informatics.

My longstanding interest in unexpected untoward outcomes of pregnancy has served as a major focus of my academic work, as well as my involvement in medical malpractice expert witness reviews. This intersection of academic and medicolegal work has informed and enhanced the benefits of being engaged in both arenas.Professionally, I most recently served as Division Chief of Anatomic Pathology at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, an enormously enjoyable six year experience. I am currently a Senior Pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. I continue to engage in medical malpractice expert witness reviews.

Robin is of counsel at the Vorys and a member of the health care group. Her practice is focused on regulatory compliance, medical malpractice, contract negotiation with various payor sources, HIPAA/HITECH privacy and security, state confidentiality laws, and 42 C.F.R. Part 2. She has extensive experience representing physicians and hospitals, as well as providers in the fields of behavioral health and developmental disabilities. Robin has advised on a variety of risk, compliance, licensure and reimbursement issues. Prior to joining Vorys, Robin spent eight years as associate counsel at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Robin has been recognized by AM Best as a Best Lawyer in the area of health care law.