Welcome to Clinical Microbiology! The Division of Clinical Microbiology is staffed with 28.4 FTEs who provide expert services in infectious disease laboratory diagnostics. The Division offers a comprehensive menu of tests, with 500,000 billable tests annually. Our laboratory division consists of six sections or subspecialties: bacteriology, mycobacteriology, immunology, molecular diagnostics, mycology, and parasitology. Most sections of the laboratory provide services 7 days a week, to meet the patient care needs of the UTMB Health System. Critical services are provided 24 hours a day.
Testing capabilities in the Division of Clinical Microbiology include a variety of stain and microscopic morphologic identification, culture methods, and phenotypic and genotypic identification methods. State-of-the-art, automated instrumentation is used for identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of bacteria, mycobacteria and fungi, serologic assays, and nucleic acid amplification methods such as reverse-transcription PCR and strand-displacement amplification.
Three doctorate level faculty members, Drs. Natalie Williams-Bouyer, Ping Ren and Fang Rong provide technical, clinical, and administrative oversight of the Division. Division faculty are also actively engaged in various research activities, often in collaboration with faculty from other UTMB departments, as well as outside institutions.