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Dr. William B. Coleman earned a B.S. magna cum laude in Biology (minor in Chemistry) from Wingate College (now Wingate University - Wingate, NC) in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC) in 1990. He joined the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, NC) in 1990 as a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Joe W. Grisham. In 1995, Dr. Coleman joined the faculty of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and subsequently attained the rank of Professor in 2007. During his time as a faculty member at UNC, Dr. Coleman served in many different roles related to graduate education. He was affiliated with the Molecular and Cellular Pathology Ph.D. Program (now the Pathobiology and Translational Science Ph.D. Program) for 22 years, serving as the Director of Graduate Studies from 2006-2012. He was also a member of the Curriculum in Toxicology (1996-2018), the Cancer Biology Training Program (2011-2018), the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (1998-2018), and the UNC Program in Translational Medicine (2006-2018). Dr. Coleman was a co-founder of the UNC Program in Translational Medicine and served as Co-Director from 2006-2015 and as Director of the Program from 2015-2018. At UNC, Dr. Coleman trained 7 Ph.D. students and 3 M.S. students and served on dissertation committees for 40 other students associated with several different Ph.D. programs (including Pathobiology and Translational Science, Toxicology, Genetics, Molecular Biology, and Nutrition). Dr. Coleman departed full-time service at the University of North Carolina in 2018 but remains an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

In the classroom, Dr. Coleman was the Director or Co-Director of three graduate courses: Pathology 792 (Seminar in Carcinogenesis - 1996-2018), Pathology 715 (Molecular and Cellular Pathophysiology of Disease: Systemic Pathology - 2007-2018), and Pathology 723 (Translational Pathology and Laboratory Medicine - 2013-2018). Dr. Coleman was selected by the students in the Pathobiology and Translational Science Ph.D. Program to receive the Joe W. Grisham Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching in 2000, 2002, 2009, and 2012. In 2016, he was selected to receive the Faculty Merit Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Dr. Coleman began his research career focused on the effects of chronic ethanol consumption on mitochondrial biogenesis working with Dr. Carol C. Cunningham at Wake Forest University. Upon moving to the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1990, Dr. Coleman shifted to focus on liver stem cells and liver carcinogenesis with Dr. Joe W. Grisham. As a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Dr. Coleman's laboratory worked on a variety of topics, including liver stem cells, identification of human liver tumor suppressor genes, use of molecular features to distinguish multiple primary versus metastatic lung cancer, and the genetics and epigenetics of breast cancer. Most recently, Dr. Coleman's work focused on the molecular subclassification of ER-positive/HER2-negative breast cancers and their association with aggressive clinical features. Dr. Coleman's research group has published >140 original research reports, reviews, and book chapters. The research conducted in Dr. Coleman's laboratory was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Friends for an Earlier Breast Cancer Test, the University Cancer Research Fund, the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of a Medicine.