MSTP Leadership
Director
Associate Professor
Dr. Denise Marciano is the Carolyn R. Bacon Professor of Medical Science and Education and an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. An NIH-funded physician-scientist, she directs a research program dedicated to understanding the molecular mechanisms of kidney development, repair, and hereditary kidney diseases. Dr. Marciano received her PhD in Cellular Biophysics and her MD through the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program at Weill Cornell, Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. She completed her internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, where she also conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Louis Reichardt in Molecular Medicine. At UT Southwestern, Dr. Marciano previously served as Associate Director of the Internal Medicine Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP), reflecting her longstanding commitment to physician-scientist training. Nationally, she is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA). As Director of the Perot Family MSTP, she is deeply committed to fostering the next generation of physician-scientists, drawing on her own experiences at the interface of science and medicine to support trainees in their growth as investigators and clinicians.
Assistant Director
Assistant Professor
Bret M. Evers, M.D., Ph.D., is an alumnus of the UT Southwestern MSTP and is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Ophthalmology. His doctoral thesis was performed in the laboratory of Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein and involved understanding the role of cholesterol homeostasis in craniofacial and hair follicle development. He completed his Anatomic Pathology residency and Neuropathology fellowship at UT Southwestern. While an Assistant Instructor, he completed an additional fellowship in Ophthalmic Pathology. Aside from his clinical duties in neuropathology and ophthalmic pathology, Dr. Evers is also the Director of Autopsy at UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital. In 2018 Dr. Evers became the Director of the Histopathology Core and collaborates with numerous basic science researchers throughout the campus. In addition to his clinical and research endeavors, Dr. Evers teaches extensively in the pre-clerkship curriculum of the Medical School and within the Graduate School. He joined the MSTP administrative team in 2021, with one of his roles being to help guide students through their early medical school years and their transition into their graduate studies.
Director Emeritus
Professor
Andrew R. Zinn, M.D., Ph.D., is an alumnus of the UT Southwestern MSTP. He did residency training in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics at the Whitehead Institute before returning to UTSW in 1993 to join the faculty of the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development and the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Zinn maintained an NIH-funded laboratory for nearly 25 years, studying the genetic basis of human sex chromosome abnormalities and miscellaneous Mendelian diseases. His genetic research is best known for discoveries of mutations in the SIM1 gene causing severe obesity and in the POLA1 gene causing X-linked reticulate pigmentary disorder, a rare autoinflammatory disease. He has been director of the UTSW MSTP since 2008 and Dean of UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences since 2013.
Director Emeritus
Professor
Michael S. Brown, M.D., Professor of Molecular Genetics, received his M.D. from The University of Pennsylvania and trained in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology before embarking on research on the molecular mechanism of cholesterol homeostasis for which he and Joseph Goldstein shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Brown was a founding director of the UTSW MSTP. He and Dr. Goldstein have supervised the thesis of 23 MSTP students, a number of whom have themselves gone on to illustrious careers. As MSTP Director Emeritus he participates in program seminars and activities, provides scientific and career advice to students, and advocates nationally for the importance of physician-scientists in biomedical research, academic medicine, and industry.
