Dr. Patricia A. Mowery-Rushton, a Diplomat of the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics in Clinical Cytogenetics, has more than 30 years of experience in cytogenetics and molecular medical genetics. Dr. Rushton received her PhD and clinical fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health.  Before joining KSL, Dr. Rushton was the director of cytogenetics at Signature Genomics, a division of Perkin Elmer, from 2011 to 2014. She has also held leadership positions in cytogenetics at Genzyme Genetics/Integrated Genetics in Santa Fe, NM and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. In her new role as laboratory director and site leader, Dr. Rushton will provide technical expertise in diagnostics and test development for KSL’s genetic testing services. This includes clinical oversight of the cytogenetic and FISH group, whose primary focus is on hematologic oncology with planned growth into solid tumor and prenatal genetics. In the past, Dr. Rushton’s work has focused on cytogenetics and molecular rearrangements in leukemia, and she will translate that experience into the expansion of the genetics program that KSL is developing. Dr. Rushton has a strong record of research and brings an extraordinary and diverse body of expertise and accomplishments to KSL.  As Dr Rushton states “One of my goals is to bring improved client contact to the genetics division, and to ensure that appropriate understanding of what the testing information can provide the physician.  I believe and strive to establish a partnership with the pathologists and physicians in managing patient care”.

Petr Starostik, MD, is the director of molecular genetics at KSL Diagnostics Laboratories. He oversees laboratory testing in the areas of molecular diagnostics.  In his role he is responsible for clinical  test resulting and the development of new diagnostic assays. His current focus involves tests based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) and their implementation in patient care.

Dr. Starostik has 20 years of clinical expertise as a medical and technical director of molecular diagnostics for three eminent academic institutions; University of Florida Health Pathology Laboratories, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Center for Personalized Medicine in Buffalo, N.Y. (2002 - 2014), and  the Institute of Pathology of the Wuerzburg University in Wuerzburg, Germany (1997 - 2002).

Dr. Starostik is board-certified in hematopathology, as well as clinical and molecular genetic pathology by the American Board of Pathology. He completed a fellowship in hematopathology in 1997 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, following his 1991 - 1995 residency training in laboratory medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. His medical degree was earned in 1984 from the Vienna University School of Medicine in Vienna, Austria.

Throughout his career, Dr. Starostik has authored more than 80 journal articles, abstracts, book chapters and other publications on NGS, and he has been an active member of several professional organizations, including the Association for Molecular Pathology; the American Association for Cancer Research; and the American Society of Hematology.

Dr. Starostik's maintains active research program exploring the role of genetic aberrations in the development of malignancies and their use as tumor markers and prognostic factors where he can apply the latest research results to the development of new molecular diagnostic tests. 

Dr. Rushton has 20+ years of laboratory operations experience. He most recently was the Chief Operations Officer for Empire genomics with a focus on developing the clinical lab, which was spun off to KSL Diagnostics — a division of KSL Biomedical. Prior to this role he was the Science, Technology and Innovation Director at Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML) in Spokane, WA. PAML is the 4th largest clinical diagnostic laboratory in the United States. He also worked at Signature Genomics Laboratory (SGL) in Spokane, WA with a focus on test expansion and business development. SGL was a state-of-the-art array-based comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) diagnostic laboratory. Additionally, John sits as an expert reviewer for the Life Sciences Discovery Fund of Washington State that supports the commercialization of translational research to improve Washington resident healthcare through scientific business development. Dr. Rushton offers a wide breadth of industry experience which includes commercialization, regulatory compliance and project management.

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Dr. Rushton earned a Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences, with a focus on genetics, from the University of Pittsburgh (PITT) School of Medicine in 1992. He also received an MBA from the University of New Mexico (UNM) Anderson School of Management in 2005. He held postdoctoral fellowships at PITT School of Medicine and UNM School of Medicine, focusing on molecular biology approaches to the study of cancer and infectious diseases at both. Following his fellowships, Dr. Rushton joined the faculty at UNM School of Medicine with a focus on biomarkers of cancer and infectious disease susceptibility. He was promoted to Director of the UNM School of Medicine Center of Infectious Disease and Immunology Sequencing, Microarray and Biological Safety Level 3 core laboratories, and was involved in strategic technology investments while at UNM.

Dr. Paul J. Isackson has been a technical laboratory director of the Robert Guthrie Laboratory and an Associate Research Professor of Pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, State University of New York at Buffalo from 2007 to 2020.Dr. Isackson holds a Certificate of Qualification for Genetic Testing from the New York State Department of Health.Dr. Isackson has previously held faculty positions at the University of California, Irvine and the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Florida.Dr. Isackson has published more than 90 scientific manuscripts about the molecular biology and regulation of neurotrophic factors and kallikreins in the nervous system and more recently regarding metabolic muscle diseases and genetic risk for statin myopathy. 

Dr. Miao He, a Diplomat of the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics in Clinical Biochemical Genetics, has more than 15 years of experience in clinical biochemical genetics and served as a faculty for three academic institutions: University of Pittsburgh (2003-2005), Emory University (2008-2013) and University of Pennsylvania (2013-present). She has extensive expertise in identifying new metabolic diseases involving fatty acid oxidation, cholesterol biogenesis and protein glycosylation. Dr. He completed her clinical training in clinical biochemical genetics at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2008, following her postdoctoral fellowship in Medical Genetics with Mayo Medical School. She received her Ph.D. degree in Genetics at Leeds University in the United Kingdom in 1999. Dr. He served as a clinical laboratory director at Emory Genetics Laboratory when she was an assistant professor with Emory University. In that role, she started expanding clinical tests to improve the diagnosis of congenital disorders of glycosylation using mass spectrometry and next generation sequencing. In 2013, she became the Co-Director of the Michael Palmieri Laboratory for Metabolic and Advanced Diagnostics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Currently, Dr. He also serves as a Co-Director of the CDG biomarker core funded by NIH U54 CDG consortium grant. She has been a member of the Society of Inherited Metabolic Disorders and the American Association of Clinical Chemistry. Dr. He has published over 100 journal articles, abstracts, reviews and book chapters and has an active research program in biomarker discovery using integrated omics analysis.