ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2020
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
Valerie Arboleda, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Department of Human Genetics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She completed her MSTP training at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Vilain and identified the genetic mechanisms underlying several novel genetic disorders associated with disorders of sex development. She completed her residency training at UCLA in Clinical Pathology with a focus on Molecular Genetic Pathology. Currently, Dr. Arboleda is an Associate Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Lab at UCLA. Dr. Arboleda’s research laboratory is focused on understanding the functional role of genetic variation on clinical phenotypes, using functional genomics tools, clinical EHR data, and classic molecular biology and biochemistry. In 2017, she was awarded the NIH Early Independence Award (DP5) to explore the intersection between monogenic and complex (polygenic) phenotypes as a tool to explore phenotypic variability in rare monogenic disorders.