The 2006 Mostofi Award recognizes the services to the Academy of Richard J. Zarbo, M.D., D.M.D. Dr. Zarbo began contributing scientific abstracts to the Academy's meetings in 1986; his contributions now include 190 posters and platform presentations. He has also taught short courses in surgical pathology of the head and neck and quality assurance in anatomic pathology, served as a surgical pathology specialty conference panelist (1995-1996), and co-directed the long course on head and neck pathology (2001). In addition, he has overseen proffered papers sections presented at five annual meetings since 1991 and, he supervised the selection and evaluation of expanded offerings of short courses from 1994 to 1999. In 1996-1997 he chaired the ad hoc Informatics Committee and served seven years (1997-2004) on the Academy's Publication Committee, chairing it during the search for a new editor of Laboratory Investigation and the selection of a new publisher. Following his election to the USCAP Council (2004), Dr. Zarbo served on the ad hoc Bylaws Committee and now chairs the Young Investigator Award Committee.

Richard John Zarbo was born in Manhattan (in 1952) and grew up in Manchester near Hartford, Connecticut. In some ways, the Academy owes Dr. Zarbo's contributions to a Connecticut dentist, David Krutchkoff. Dr. Krutchkoff directed the oral pathology course at the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine in 1977-1978, recognized Dick Zarbo's gift for histopathology, recruited him as his first oral pathology resident, and introduced him to the pathology department at the UConn School of Medicine, then chaired by Peter Ward. This introduction and encouragement by the UConn pathology chief resident, Kent Johnson, M.D., led to Dr. Zarbo adding an M.D. to his D.M.D. from UConn and to a residency in anatomic pathology in Dr. Ward's next department at the University of Michigan. In Ann Arbor, Dick flourished under the tutelage of, especially, the late Kenneth D. McClatchey, also a dual degree dentist- physician.

After a clinical pathology residency back in Hartford and two years at Wayne State, Dick moved to the Henry Ford Hospital in 1987. Academic aspects of his nearly two decades at Henry Ford include 180 peer-reviewed publications, 25 chapters and other contributions to books, more than a dozen visiting professorships, the chair of a similar number of national and international symposia, and two decades of grant funding. These academic endeavors have combined with both the busy day-to-day practice of surgical pathology and the management of, first, a high volume surgical pathology division, then a large hospital pathology department, and now a giant health system's complex pathology and laboratory services.

Beginning in 1988, Dr. Zarbo worked with another influential mentor, the clinical chemist Peter Howanitz, to invent and develop the College of American Pathologists' Q-Probes and Q-Tracks programs. For more than a decade, Dr. Zarbo was the force that drove the production of the anatomic pathology Q-Probes, until they had studied the histopathological testing process from beginning (accession) to end (reporting) and ranged over a wide variety of specimen types and diagnostic categories. Beginning in 1991, publication of anatomic pathology Q-Probes studies in abstract form at the USCAP annual meeting helped stimulate the creation of a new annual meeting abstract category, Quality Assurance, in 1995. The Q-Probes collaborative studies of laboratory quality have now produced the largest body of evidence about laboratory quality, more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications. As chair of the CAP's Quality Practices Committee Dr. Zarbo also brought to birth the Q-Tracks as an ongoing, peer-comparing monitoring program that indexes both anatomic and clinical laboratory quality. The Q-Tracks are the only currently available national set of pathology and laboratory quality measures validated to show quality improvement, overtime, in real practice settings. To share knowledge of laboratory quality management across organizations of practicing pathologists, Dr. Zarbo sponsored the introduction and oversaw the design of content for the CAP/USCAP companion meetings between 1996 and 2002. He now collaborates in a multi-site, multi-year study of patterns of diagnostic error in pathology, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In 2004 he coordinated a seminal symposium on this topic that recently appeared in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

A great eye, quick mind, accurate pen, and focus on what the clinicians want and need make Richard Zarbo a superb and versatile surgical pathologist. An ebullient temperament, ever-active intellect, and enjoyment of the human comedy make him an enjoyable and stimulating colleague. Manhattan street smarts, Connecticut common sense, and a Detroit ear for how the machine's running, make him an effective administrator. All these qualities have made him the indefatigable investigator and effective presenter, omni-competent committeeman and efficient organizer, the sagacious adviser and genial encourager of young talent in our specialty, whom the Academy honors with the Mostofi Award in 2006.