Charlene Bierl, MD, PhD, will become the 11th Director of the Division of Laboratory Medicine and the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine on July 1, 2020. The Pepper Laboratory, recognized as the first clinical laboratory associated with an academic medical center in the United States, was established in 1895 by Provost William Pepper Jr, MD, partly with his own personal funds and in honor of his father, who from 1860 to 1864 had been Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. William Pepper Jr, served as its first director (1884-87). Dr. Bierl follows Irving Nachamkin, DrPH, MPH, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, who was appointed in 2009 and will retire this summer.  Dr. Nachamkin was recruited to Penn in 1982 as Associate Director of Clinical Microbiology by then chairman Leonard Jarett, MD (1980-98) and David BP Goodman, MD, PhD, eighth Director of the Pepper Laboratory (1980-83). Jarret had moved from Washington University several years prior and merged the William Pepper Laboratory and the Department of Pathology into the single unified department as we know it today.

Dr. Bierl is currently an Associate Professor in our Department. Dr. Bierl graduated from Wesleyan University, and earned her MD and PhD degrees from Boston University. She then joined the residency program at HUP as a resident in clinical pathology, where she served as Chief Resident. During her residency, she was awarded the William Pepper Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements of a resident in academic laboratory medicine. She completed a fellowship in Transfusion Medicine, also at HUP. Dr. Bierl took her first faculty position at UMDNJ- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden Cooper University Hospital, which later converted to Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in 2012. In this position, she took on a variety of clinical leadership roles, including Medical Director for Chemistry, Coagulation, Point of Care testing, and the blood bank, prior to being appointed the Director of the Clinical Laboratories (CLIA director) in 2013. As a leader, she modeled a consultative, multidisciplinary service-oriented approach to laboratory services and championed efforts promoting optimal laboratory utilization.  Highlights of her successes include launching a program for uncrossmatched whole blood in trauma recipients (the third location nationally, after Mayo and Pittsburgh), streamlining of EPIC laboratory menus to improve provider ordering efficiency, and creating standardized reports to monitor laboratory ordering practices across individual hospitalists and medicine residents. Her efforts led to national recognition by the American Society for Clinical Pathology as a Choosing Wisely Champion.

She became a Penn faculty member in 2019, joining Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as the Medical Director of Central Laboratory and Phlebotomy Services. Her extensive knowledge of clinical pathology, lab stewardship, finances, and lab information systems make her especially well-suited to lead a division as large and as complex as Laboratory Medicine at HUP.

In her new role, Dr. Bierl’s initial priorities will be to ensure that the testing needs (including pandemic-related testing) of the university, hospitals, and affiliates are fulfilled and to ensure smooth implementation of the new laboratory services at HUP East. She will also take a major leadership role in PennLab, our group of regional Penn-affiliated laboratories. Her vision for these roles includes growth of communication- and consultative-type services in the form of expanded diagnostic management team type activity, as well as enhanced educational offerings to residents (both from pathology and other specialties).

For the next few months, Charlene will be dividing her time between CHOP and HUP as she transitions into her new role while continuing to work with CHOP Pathology to aid their transition to a new laboratory information system. I would like to congratulate Charlene for her new role and extend my gratitude to Irv Nachamkin for leading the Pepper Lab over the last eleven years.

David B. Roth, MD, PhD
Chair, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine