Our Team

Dr. Denise Imai-Leonard

DVM, PhD, DACVP - Director

Dr. Imai-Leonard is the Director of the Comparative Pathology Laboratory (CPL), a Health Sciences Clinical Professor, and Vice Chair of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. She trained as a truly comparative pathologist through a residency in Zoo/Wildlife Pathology with the San Diego Zoological Society. She earned a PhD studying chronic Lyme borreliosis with Dr. Stephen Barthold at UC Davis and was board-certified in 2007. Her expertise is in geropathology, phenotyping of genetically engineered animals and the investigation of spontaneous and infectious diseases of research animals. She is active in shared governance and academic service through the SVM and American College of Veterinary Pathologists. 

Stefanie Carroll

MS - Associate Director

Stefanie's 25+ years of laboratory experience includes necropsy services, bacterial culture and identification, operation and troubleshooting of clinical chemistry and hematology analyzers, research trial planning and execution, project planning and coordination, quality control/assurance, and safety program design and implementation. Additionally, Stefanie is highly regarded for her readiness to provide valuable technical assistance within the laboratory whenever required.

Dr. Pedro Ruivo

DVM, MS, DACVP - Health Sciences Clinical Assistant Professor

Pedro Ruivo earned his DVM and Master of Science from the University of Lisbon in 2018. He then completed an internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC before working as a junior comparative pathologist at the Institute of Molecular Medicine until 2021. He subsequently undertook residency and fellowship training in comparative pathology at UC Davis until August 2023, where he now serves as a Comparative Pathologist. Pedro's research focuses on comparative pathology, animal models of human diseases, infectious and non-infectious diseases, pathology of humanized mice and immunopathology, geropathology and aging, and non-human primate pathology.

Cathy Inta

As a senior laboratory technician, Cathy's significant responsibilities include the development, validation, and integration of molecular assays aimed at detecting pathogenic microorganisms within CPL's health monitoring program. Additionally, she contributes substantially to the processing of clinical chemistries and complete blood counts in the clinical pathology service. With her extensive expertise and experience, Cathy also readily lends support to various other CPL services when able.

Melea Hunrath

Project & Trainee Coordinator with 13 years of diagnostic laboratory experience. Melea is responsible for supervision of necropsy and research pathology services and routinely hosts workshops to train investigators and graduate students in rodent prosection and sample procurement techniques.

Briana Luna

Briana's extensive experience performing dissections and diagnostic evaluations of rodent, large animal, avian, and aquatic species has been of tremendous benefit to CPL in her capacity as lead technician in both the health surveillance and parasitology service areas. In addition, Briana contributes her advanced grasp of comparative anatomy to the execution of a wide breadth of research projects, ranging from phenotypic characterizations of new murine strains to CAR T cell studies and beyond. 

Jessica Troth

With an educational background in clinical laboratory science and clinical microbiology, Jessica is responsible for CPL's Microbiology services.  Additionally, she consistently provides valuable assistance to molecular diagnostics and pathology services. 

Aryanna Arredondo

Aryanna is the financial analyst and marketing specialist at CPL, responsible for managing the department's budget, marketing operations, and human resources. 

Alexandra Griffey

Alexandra serves as CPL’S administration. She manages daily submissions, client communication, and is responsible for CPL’s case reporting.

Kevin Morisette

Applications developer and database/system administrator with 24 years of programming experience. Developed, implemented and continually improves upon the CPL laboratory information management system (LIMS) and client web portal.