Dr. Schoedel is a Professor of Pathology in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She received a B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. from the Medical College of Virginia (now Virginia Commonwealth University). She trained in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh, followed by training in anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of Pittsburgh. Subsequently, she completed four fellowships, including bone pathology and cytopathology. In 1997 Dr. Schoedel joined the UPSOM Department of Pathology as faculty, initially as Laboratory Director at UPMC Beaver Valley. In 2001 she returned to UPMC Presbyterian-Shadyside to practice gastrointestinal pathology, bone and soft tissue pathology and non-gynecologic cytopathology. She is active in the education of medical students, residents and fellows and innovative in the creation of multidisciplinary electives for medical students. Dr. Schoedel is active in sarcoma and thyroid cytology research. Recent sarcoma projects have focused on molecular mechanisms, genomics, transcriptomics and tumor microenvironment of dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma, osteosarcoma and liposarcoma. She is actively collaborating with the Orthopedic Oncology Laboratory at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and with the University of Pittsburgh Dental School. The prospect of observing changes in the bone at the subcellular and tissue levels subject to conditions in space is an exciting one. I am happy to lend pathology expertise to future projects in Space Medicine, evaluating changes in bone tissues that may impact therapies for osteoporosis and other diseases with predominance of bone loss.
