Ronald Balassanian is Professor of Pathology and Interventional Cytologist at the University of California San Francisco where he serves as the Residency and Fellowship Training Program Director and Medical Director of Cytology and the Fine Needle Aspiration Clinic. He has led the ultrasound guided FNA biopsy workshops at the American Society of Cytopathology Annual Scientific Meeting since 2011 and has conducted FNA courses around the world, reaching underserved communities in low resource settings including Tanzania, Peru, and Ethiopia. His areas of interest include breast FNA biopsy, applied molecular diagnostics in cytology, and patient communication. He is a graduate of University of Vermont Larner College Medicine, and completed residency training in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Fellowship training Cytopathology at UCSF. He has long been an advocate for patient centered communication and minimally invasive diagnostic cytopathology.