Director, Queen's University Cancer Research Institute
AP Resident: 1996-1998
Chief Resident: 1998-1999
Postdoctoral Fellow: 1999-2001
Dr. Berman is a clinician-scientist specializing in urologic surgical pathology whose highly cited cancer research spans a wide range of topics, including mouse models, cancer biology, genomics, predictive and prognostic biomarkers, and best practices in surgical pathology. He earned his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he cloned the gene that encodes a crucial enzyme in male urogenital development, steriod 5-alpha reductase type 2. He performed residency training and served as chief resident in Anatomic pathology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and completed subspecialty training urologic pathology. His postdoctoral training in molecular biology and genetics helped establish targeted therapy for the Hedgehog signaling in cancer. His independent laboratory at Johns Hopkins was the first to establish genomic features of embryonic signaling in prostate cancer and to identify bladder cancer stem cells.
In April of 2012, Dr. Berman moved his laboratory and pathology practice to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario to pursue high impact biomarker discovery in urologic malignancies. Recently, he led a team of 7 laboratories that formed the biomarker discovery component of a 5 year, 5 million dollar prostate cancer research grant from Prostate Cancer Canada. Dr. Berman's published work has garnered over 7,000 citations in the biomedical literature. He has served on and chaired numerous grant and advisory panels in the United States and Canada, lead international courses and symposia in pathology and cancer research. Currently, Dr. Berman is the director of Queen's University Cancer Research Institute and chairs the Advanced Diagnostics Section of the Canadian Association of Pathologists.