Three Women Faculty Members Who Have Been Selected to Lead National Associations

Xiuli Liu, a professor of pathology and immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been elected president of the Chinese American Pathologists Association. The association has more than 830 members in the United States and Canada.

Dr. Liu also serves as chief of the liver/gastrointestinal section and director of the gastrointestinal pathology fellowship program at Washington University. Her clinical and research interests include gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases, fatty liver disease, liver transplant pathology, and gastrointestinal, liver, and pancreatic cancers.

Liu earned her medical degree at Beijing Medical University in China. She holds a master’s degree in physiology and a Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and completed a residency and fellowship in pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Octavia Peck Palmer, an associate professor of pathology, critical care medicine, and clinical and translational sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, was named president-elect of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. She will serve one year as president-elect. She will then serve successive terms as the association’s president from August 2023 through July 2024, and as past president from August 2024 through July 2025.

In addition to her faculty appointments at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Peck Palmer serves as the division director of clinical chemistry and as medical director of UPMC Presbyterian and Shadyside hospitals and automated testing laboratories. She is also the assistant medical director of the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh automated testing laboratory.

Dr. Peck Palmer is a graduate of Columbia College in South Carolina, where she majored in biology. She holds a Ph.D. in physiology from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Amanda Bettencourt, an assistant professor of community health in the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania is the new president of the American Association of Critical Nurses. AACN is the world’s largest specialty nursing organization, with more than 130,000 members and over 200 chapters in the United States.

Dr. Bettenourt’s research focuses on burn care and pediatric acute care. She was recently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, where she was appointed to the National Clinician Scholars Program and received advanced training in implementation science.

Dr. Bettencourt earned a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from the University of Florida and an accelerated bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds master’s degrees in nursing from Johns Hopkins University and in health care research from the University of Michigan, as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.