Dr. Sefik Gokaslan
Born in the US and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, Dr. Gokaslan attended the University of Istanbul School of Medicine and received his MD in 1984. After finishing medical school, he served in the underdeveloped areas of Turkey and practiced rural general medicine.
He completed his Pathology Residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, NY in 1993. He was a Fellow in Cytopathology in 1994 and General Oncologic Surgical Pathology in 1995 at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. He joined the faculty of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Northwestern University, Chicago, IL in 1996 followed by an appointment at the department of pathology at UT Southwestern Medical Center Dallas, TX in 1997. At UTSW he rose through the ranks to become Professor and the director of Anatomic Pathology. He retired from UTSW in 2019 and joined SHSU in 2020 as a pathology educator.
His research interests focused on cardiothoracic and transplant pathology when he became a member of the thoracic pathology subspecialty team at UT Southwestern. As a cytopathologist, he contributed to the cytology literature with publication of case reports and small clinical series of rare and newly defined entities with the aim of facilitating their diagnosis utilizing cytomorphology and ancillary studies. He included many trainees in his scholarly work throughout his career and he is very passionate about supporting medical student engagement in the future studies.
His most recent publications reflect his interest in developing better methods for further understanding and early diagnosis of humoral and cellular pathologic rejection in the heart and lung transplant samples. He collaborated with the radiology department and took part in the studies leading to better characterization of the radiologic and pathologic correlation of non-neoplastic interstitial lung diseases. Over the years he has had the great good fortune to teach many medical students, residents, and fellows.