Dr. David Dawson, MD, PhD

David Dawson is a basic/translational research scientist with a focused interest in pancreatic cancer, as well as a practicing surgical pathologist. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, as well as the Associate Director for the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program.

Dr. Dawson received his B.S. degree from Duke University in 1991 and his MD/PhD degrees from Northwestern University MSTP in 1999, where he worked under Dr. Noel Bouck in the Department of Micrbiology-Biology studying angiogenesis. After completing a residency in Anatomic Pathology and fellowship training in Gastrointestinal Pathology at UCLA in 2002, he joined the UCLA Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine as a clinical instructor and postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Teitell. From 2002 to 2006 he was a combined clinical instructor in surgical pathology and postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Pathology at UCLA, where he worked on epigenetics and lymphomagenesis. He became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013. His laboratory explores molecular and biochemical signaling events involved pancreatic tumor progression, as well as the development of improved diagnostic and predictive biomarkers for clinical decision-making.