Faculty & Staff

Susan F. Ely, MD, MPHTM, joined the Department of Pathology faculty as Associate Professor and Director of the Autopsy Service in August 2025. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Ely had dedicated her career to graduate medical education and public service, serving over a period of 26 years as both the Fellowship Training Program Director and a senior medical examiner for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York (OCME), home to one of the largest forensic pathology fellowship training programs in the world. Prior to becoming the NYC Program Director, Dr. Ely was appointed Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Bronx County, serving a population of 1.4 million New York City residents. Most recently, she served as an associate professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, an Associate Medical Examiner for the state of Connecticut, and a forensic pathology consultant. She received her Medical and Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine degrees from Tulane University and completed internships in psychiatry, pediatrics, and internal medicine, residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology, and fellowship training in forensic pathology at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner under the mentorship of Dr. Charles S. Hirsch. Dr. Ely is an ABP diplomate in Clinical, Anatomic, and Forensic Pathology.

Raffaella Morotti graduated from the University of Milan. She completed her residency in anatomic pathology at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by a fellowship in pediatric pathology at New York University. She is board-certified in both anatomic and pediatric pathology. She join the pathology faculty at Yale in 2011 and is the Director of Pediatric Pathology and the Associate Director of the Pathology Autopsy Service.

I am a neuropathologist and researcher in neuroimmunology. My background is in electrophysiology and biomedical engineering of neural interface and neural information processing systems. My interests are in diseases of the central nervous system, including motor system diseases and cancer. I am working on advancing the techniques of computational pathology in order to better understand and diagnose diseases. My research involves the application of machine learning, image analysis, and statistics to histology and genomic data with the goal of better characterizing and classifying tumors. I am developing software to analyze histologic images taken from the kinds of slides produced in the routine clinical evaluation of tissue.  By using statistical and machine learning techniques, these algorithms look for patterns in cell placement and morphology that correspond to the tissue genetic profiles. I believe this simultaneous genotypic and phenotypic characterization of tumors will provide a deeper understanding of neurobiology, neuropathology, and caner immunology, and identify key elements of CNS microenvironments whose interactions advance our explanations and predictions of pathologic processes affecting the brain, retina, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system.

Pallavi Gopal is a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Her Ph.D. thesis work in Neuroscience with Dr. Jeffrey Golden focused on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms that guide neuronal migration during forebrain development. After earning her M.D., Pallavi completed postgraduate clinical training in Anatomic Pathology and Neuropathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She did her postdoctoral research training with Dr. Erika Holzbaur at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gopal is a recipient of the NINDS Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award. She joined the Pathology Department at Yale School of Medicine in January 2018.

David Rimm is the Anthony N. Brady Professor of Pathology in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine (Oncology) at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the Director of Yale Pathology Tissue Services and the Lab for Quantitative Diagnostics in Anatomic Pathology. He completed an MD-PhD at Johns Hopkins University Medical School followed by a Pathology Residency at Yale and a Cytopathology Fellowship at the Medical College of Virginia. His research lab group focuses on quantitative pathology using the AQUA® technology invented in his lab, and other quantitative methods, with projects related to predicting response and resistance to both targeted and immune- therapy in cancer. His lab is involved in the use of new high-plex methods including digital spatial profiling (NanoString) for new biomarker discovery. He is also interested in translation of assays to the clinic and standardization of those assays for CLIA labs. The work is supported by grants from the NIH, BCRF, and sponsored research agreements from biopharma. He also serves on the CAP Immunohistochemistry committee and multiple scientific advisory boards for biotech and pharma. He is an author of over 500 peer-reviewed papers with an H-index of 120 and 8 patents.

Dr. Sanchez received his undergraduate degree at Fairfield University, his medical degree at SUNY Stony Brook, and did his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Yale New Haven Hospital. He worked as a community pathologist at the Hospital of Central Connecticut before joining the Pathology Department at Yale School of Medicine where he is Co-Director of the Legacy Tissue Donation Program. In addition to surgical pathology, his interests include autopsy pathology, microbiology, medical education, medical history, and quality management.

John Sinard is a board-certified anatomic pathologist. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University, and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins. His residency training was at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is active on the autopsy and surgical pathology services, with a specialty interest in ophthalmic pathology. He founded the Pathology Informatics Program, and has been developing software for over 30 years. His academic interests are centered on translational informatics: delivering modern data management tools to practicing physicians and researchers.