Julie C Fanburg-Smith, MD

Julie Fanburg-Smith, MD, is a professor of pathology and pediatrics at UVA. She is the director of musculoskeletal pathology and chief of surgical pathology. Her interests include diagnosing rare and common diseases and tumors of the soft tissue, bone, lung, blood, and lymph nodes in adults and children.

She has national and international experience in the diagnosis of sarcoma and other neoplasia and non-neoplastic entities, including infection, inflammatory, and reactive conditions, and actively works with a team of radiologists, surgeons, and other clinicians to determine the best patient treatment to optimize patient care.

Dr. Fanburg-Smith was born in California and grew up in the Boston area. In addition to playing sports and working as a waitress and babysitter, she had summer jobs in medical and scientific research laboratories. She received a second-place award at the Massachusetts State Science Fair at MIT for her unique, innovative scientific project, while she was in public high school.

She was originally inspired to pursue medicine and research by her maternal grandfather, a rural physician and humanitarian in western Massachusetts, and her father, the first to go to college in his family and an academic leader in pulmonary medicine who received a lifetime achievement award from the American Thoracic Society.

Dr. Fanburg-Smith is the first female to go into medicine in her extended family of physicians and enjoys inspiring and mentoring the next generation of physicians as well as compassionately and accurately making diagnoses to help patients.

A pioneer woman in the first coed class at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, she attended medical school at Vanderbilt University. She completed her anatomic and clinical pathology residency at the University of Vermont and her general surgery internship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in New Hampshire.

Dr. Fanburg-Smith completed fellowships in surgical pathology and bone and soft tissue pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and hematopathology at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC.

Her previous experience includes working as deputy chair of orthopedic and soft tissue pathology and director of education at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. She was also a triple-appointed professor of pathology, orthopedics, and pediatrics at Penn State Health, where she served as vice chair for academic affairs and director of musculoskeletal and pulmonary pathology. She also served on the medical school admissions and academic promotions committees and was the Children Oncology Group representative.

Dr. Fanburg-Smith’s passion is the diagnosis of rare and common entities, medical education and mentorship, and substantial research. One of her diagnoses of a challenging, rare hematopoietic bone tumor in a young student was written about in New York Times magazine. The patient was successfully treated, completed education, and graduated.

Her collaborative research varies from basic science for Charcot neuropathic arthropathy to clinical trial work on pediatric sarcoma and novel translational clinicoradiologic–pathologic observation of targetable mutations in neoplasms.

She has published several seminal or largest series entities and gives many local, national, and international presentations each year. She reviews for, and is on the editorial board for, several peer-reviewed journals and has co-authored chapters for the World Health Organization. She is the recipient of a lifetime achievement Founders Medal Award on behalf of UVA from the International Skeletal Society.

Dr. Fanburg-Smith enjoys spending free time with her family, friends, and pets, pursuing music and arts, reading, traveling, running, hiking, skiing, playing pickleball, and rock climbing.

Gender

Female

Languages

English

Age Groups Seen

Adults (21-65)
Older Adults (65+)

Primary Education

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Residency

University of Vermont College of Medicine

Fellowships

Boston Medical Center

Certification

American Board of Pathology (Anatomic Pathology), American Board of Pathology (Clinical Pathology)

Additional Specialties

Cytopathology