Into the Anatomy Lab 2026

Steven N. Popoff, PhD, a nationally recognized educator and educational champion, is the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Education and Data Science. He joined the Lewis Katz School of Medicine faculty in 1988 and has been promoted to a succession of leadership posts over the years. He currently holds the John Franklin Huber Chair of Anatomy & Cell Biology. Dr. Popoff is known as a central guiding force in the ongoing quest to improve educational strategy at the medical school. He twice chaired the school’s curriculum committee, played a key role in the redesign of the MD program curriculum, and has directed courses taught by multiple faculty. A teacher – and a teacher’s teacher – he has deep knowledge of emerging theories and modalities of education, and he uses student and faculty feedback to guide continuous advancement – not just of his own teaching but also the Department’s priorities, practices, and philosophies. Dr. Popoff has won prestigious awards for educational excellence, including the 2020 Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, an honor reserved for true masters. Dr. Popoff provides education leadership at the national level, with presentations at national educational group forums. He is a longtime grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health – which has funded his scholarly pursuits continuously since 1985. The results of his work have appeared in numerous prestigious journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association. He’s excited about the department’s reconfiguration, which became official on July 1, 2021 – bringing together, in one department, faculty once dispersed among separate basic science departments. “Gathering educators into one common department is clearly advantageous,” Dr. Popoff says. Exciting interactions and collaborations to enhance teaching and learning are already underway – for example the idea of developing innovative curricula specific for each major health profession. “And spearheading a new graduate program to train future biomedical educators. Medical education is an emerging specialty, a career path experiencing exponential growth,” he says. In the past, basic science educators were housed in departments primarily focused on research, but now they have a collective home in a department focused on education. Centralization enables faculty to fully focus their efforts on the school’s educational mission – teaching students, prioritizing educational innovation and scholarship, and participating in education-related service.

Professor Hodge is a Professor Emeritus at Temple University where he teaches law, anatomy, and forensic courses. He is also a member of the Dispute Resolution Institute in Philadelphia where he serves as a mediator and neutral arbitrator. Professor Hodge has been named one of the most popular continuing legal education instructors in the country and lectures frequently to attorneys, judges, physicians. and governmental agencies on medical/legal issues and artificial intelligence. He has received multiple teaching awards including being named a Temple University Great Teacher and his Anatomy for Lawyers course was the recipient of the ACLEA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Continuing Legal Education. Professor Hodge is one of the most published authors in the United States on medical/legal matters. His book, Anatomy, and Physiology for Legal Professionals was published by PBI in 2020, and he is also the co-author of the books: Traumatic Head and Brain Injuries, ABA; The Forensic Autopsy, ABA; The Spine, ABA; Clinical Anatomy for Attorneys, ABA; and author of the award-winning book, Anatomy for Litigators, ALI-ABA. He also wrote Law in American Society, McGraw Hill; Law for the Business Enterprise, McGraw Hill; and Thermography and Personal Injury Litigation, Wiley Law. In addition to his authoring multiple books, he has published more than 200 articles in medical and legal journals and in excess of 500 non-referred publications. Professor Hodge is a graduate of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the Graduate Division of the Law School. He has received mediation training at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. In addition to writing multiple law review articles on the various applications of artificial intelligence from its use in medicine to the legal profession, he testified before the Pennsylvania Legislature’s Democratic Caucus studying the use of artificial intelligence in a business setting.