Dr. Prashant Bhat, M.D., Ph.D., is a resident physician in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCSF, where he is part of the Pathology Physician Scientist Program (PSP), which prepares trainees for independent careers as physician-scientists. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley in 2014, where he trained with Professor Jennifer Doudna, and completed his Ph.D. in Biology at Caltech in 2023 under the mentorship of Professor Mitchell Guttman, followed by his M.D. from UCLA in 2026.
As a resident, Dr. Bhat is rotating through the core disciplines of clinical pathology, including transfusion medicine, hematopathology, clinical chemistry, microbiology, and molecular genetic pathology. He is particularly interested in the integrated use of flow cytometry, molecular pathology, histopathology, and immunohistochemistry (IHC) to diagnose both malignant and non-malignant disease, with the goal of pursuing fellowship training and a career bridging diagnostic pathology and research.
His doctoral research focused on developing genomic methods, including SPRITE, for studying 3D genome architecture, leading to the discovery that genome organization around nuclear speckles drives mRNA splicing efficiency. Building on this foundation, his current research applies SPRITE and long-read sequencing approaches to primary human cells, with the goal of mapping higher-order genome organization directly in patient-derived material. A central aim of his research program is to connect these molecular findings to histopathology — investigating how morphological abnormalities observed under the microscope correspond to restructuring of DNA, RNA, and protein architecture, in order to better understand the molecular basis of disease. To pursue this work, he collaborates with colleagues across Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the Gladstone Institutes, the Arc Institute, and the Department of Medicine's Hematology/Oncology division, bringing together clinical and molecular perspectives with the goal of better understanding disease mechanisms and ultimately improving diagnosis and care for patients.