Rate My Professor Monika Schmelz

Monika Schmelz is a Professor in the Department of Pathology on the Research Scholar Track, as well as Professor in the BIO5 Institute and Applied BioSciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson. She earned her MS in Biology from Karl Ruprecht University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1982, followed by a PhD in Cell and Tumor Biology from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg in 1989, where she worked on desmosomal glycoproteins. She completed postdoctoral training with Gareth Griffith at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, studying vaccinia virus-host interactions. Prior positions include roles at Karl-Ruprecht University College of Medicine Anatomy (1982-1985), German Cancer Research Center (1989-1991), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (1991-1993), and Martin Luther University (1995-1998). In 1998, she joined the University of Arizona Department of Pathology, working with Ray Nagle on prostate cancer research, and was promoted to Research Assistant Professor in 2000 and Associate Professor in 2015. She directs the Comparative Pathology Core Laboratory, manages the Arizona Lymphoid Tissue and Blood Repository as part of the University of Arizona Cancer Center’s TACMASR core, and hosts the ANCHOR-Arizona Biorepository for the National Cancer Institute-sponsored Anal Cancer/HSIL Outcomes Research study, handling approximately 320,000 specimens for NCI-approved correlative studies. She is a member of the Cancer Biology Program at the Arizona Cancer Center.