The oceans and wildlife have always deeply fascinated Dr. Robert Nobuo Yoshimori, a native of Hawaii. Cultivating a passion for the environment stemming from a botany course taken in the sixth grade, he continued to enroll in science courses, particularly within the realm of life sciences. After earning a medical technologist certificate from the University of Iowa in 1959, he began serving as a medical technologist for Mercy Hospital in Iowa City for two years and subsequently graduated to the rank of a chief medical technologist in 1961.
In 1962, Dr. Yoshimori began serving the University of Missouri’s School of Veterinary Medicine as a graduate assistant turned research assistant in the Department of Microbiology. Relocating to California, he thereafter served the Long Beach Memorial Hospital as a chief microbiologist for two years and then the San Francisco VA Hospital as a part-time bacteriologist for the following two years. Joining the School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972, he was an assistant professor of pathology in residence until 1979. Concurrent to this role, he also joined the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center as head of the Section of Medical Microbiology in 1972 – a position he continues to hold today.
Congruent to his position as section head, Dr. Yoshimori has also served as head of the Section of the Microbiology Laboratory and as a clinical microbiologist within Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Department of Pathology since 2006, where he previously served as an assistant professor of pathology. Holding licensures in medical technology from 1959 and 1966, he has volunteered at several hospitals and remains an active volunteer faculty lecturer at UCLA.
Demonstrating versatility in his profession, Dr. Yoshimori has contributed numerous theses, research papers and abstracts throughout his career, as well as lectured at seminars and presented in his field. He has further maintained affiliation with the American Society of Clinical Pathology and the American Society of Microbiology.
To attest to his success, Dr. Yoshimori has received myriad Outstanding Clinical Pathology Faculty Member Awards from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center between 1994 and 2011. A recipient of many grants in the industry, he also earned several Outstanding Student Awards from his alma mater, the University of Missouri, from 1962 to 1964.
