Rate My Professor Zu-Hua Gao

Zu-hua Gao is Professor and Head of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He obtained his MD from Qingdao Medical College in 1983, his MSc from Harbin Medical University in 1989, and his PhD from Peking Union Medical College in 1992. Dr. Gao completed post-doctoral fellowship training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the University of Western Ontario, pathology residency training at Dalhousie University, and a subspecialty pathology fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Prior to joining UBC in 2021, Dr. Gao served as Division Head of Anatomical Pathology and Cytopathology at the University of Calgary and Calgary Laboratory Services from 2007 to 2011, and as Chair and Chief of the Department of Pathology at McGill University from 2012 to 2021. He has been President of the Canadian Chairs of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine since 2019. Dr. Gao is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (2017) and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2019). His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of colon cancer metastasis and prognostic and predictive biomarkers for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. As a surgical pathologist, his clinical expertise is in gastrointestinal and liver pathology. He has authored three textbooks, including Clinical Skills Review, Pathology Review and Practice Guide, and Gross Morphology of Common Diseases, and has published over 175 peer-reviewed articles.